up vote 0 down vote favorite
share [g+] share [fb]

When talking to people who don't speak English giving them an e-mail address over the phone is a pain. They don't know proper names of Latin alphabet letters, they don't know what is a valid word and what is not in the real language so even a very well-sounding e-mail like say "cool-guy@example.com" is meaningless to them and has to be dictated letter-by-letter.

Is there some method for doing this efficiently?

link|improve this question
82% accept rate
How do you communicate anything? – brandstaetter Oct 22 '09 at 12:36
1  
Not sure about the "real language" comment... – Rich Bradshaw Oct 22 '09 at 12:42
This is a real problem in international tech support. You can use this: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spelling_alphabet – alfplayer Oct 22 '09 at 17:01
The unfortunate part is that I've never seen an alphaber for encoding Latin characters in a language that uses Cyrillic characters. – sharptooth Oct 23 '09 at 9:50
feedback

closed as off topic by Diago Oct 22 '09 at 12:39

Questions on Super User are expected to generally relate to computer software or computer hardware, within the scope defined in the faq.

2 Answers

up vote 1 down vote

If you have a mobile phone number for them you could send them a text message.

link|improve this answer
feedback
up vote 0 down vote

This isn't really a technical issue, as you would have this problem communicating anything, not just an email address.

You could always see if you can get their contact info and just send them an email containing your own info. That may be less painless.

An alternative, albeit, a slower one, could be to get their physical address and mail them a business card.

link|improve this answer
feedback

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.