To make this useful, both parties verifying a key need to use exactly the same word list. So either there needs to be a standardized wordlist or the words have

To make this useful, both parties verifying a key need to use exactly the same word list. So either there needs to be a standardized wordlist or the words have to be generated by the algorithm itself (eg. using syllables as others suggested). Standardizing an algorithm is usually simpler than an arbitrary word list.