Multilingual Alarm Clocks

Have you ever felt frustrated with your alarm clock? Not because it didn’t wake you up in time for that critically important early morning stagger to the coffee shop, and not even because it did wake you up when you really wanted to sleep in on a Monday morning, but simply because it was boring? Think about it: every day, every single day, waking up to the same unimaginative ‘beep’, with no variety, no excitement, no deviation from the expected.

This is, no doubt, why 91% of adults, 97% of children, and 99.99999% of college students sleep through their alarms at least once a week.1

But if you feel this way about your alarm clock, instead of going back to sleep, you should seriously consider a new kind of alarm clock that wakes you up, in the words of its proponents, with “a taste of the exotic.” In contrast to your old, boring, monoglot alarm, this more sophisticated model will wake you up in any of seventeen different languages. If you’re bored by ‘beep’, you can try ‘bip’, ‘pip’, ‘bíp’, or even ‘píp’. And if you want something really out of the ordinary, the clock is happy to oblige with ‘ביפּ’, ‘μπιπ’, and even ‘嘟’. The basic model allows you to choose your language or set the clock to wake you in a random language. The advanced polyglot alarm, in addition to these features, can also wake you up using sign language or by sending mice scurrying across your torso (which the makers of the product advertise as the most natural and effective method of awaking just about any sleeper).


Detail of “Alarm Clock Balance Wheel,” by Chris Burks Chetvorno. Public Domain.

  1. Statistics produced by established statistical methods.

1 Comment

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  1. Toad the Bed Sprocket says:

    That will come in handy as I destroyed my alarm clock this morning in a half-dazed stupor while dreaming that I was being attacked by a swarm of angry bees. If the price is right, this might be a good replacement. I do like the feeling of waking up in a foreign country.

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