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WordSafety – Check a name for unwanted meanings in foreign languages

wordsafety.com

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Re: WordSafety – Check a name for unwanted meanings in foreign languages

#152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Searched several spanish words, nothing was found. I guess no support for spanish yet?

One detail to consider about Spanish is that each country has it local variation, so there are some words that are totally safe in some countries but have a totally different unwanted meaning in others. For example "coger" means "pick" in Span and "fuck" in Argentina. (If you say it in Argentina with a Spanish accent the you will not get into troubles, but the people will give a subtle weird look and someone will exp…

How do you say "pick" in Argentina? I've never learned a synonym for it.

Re: WordSafety – Check a name for unwanted meanings in foreign languages

#154

It's missing rather a big one. "Mist" means something very different in german. My point: Is this connected to dictionaries or is it all crowdsourced data?

Isn't 'mist' like 'darn' in English?

http://www.dict.cc/german-english/Mist.html

Mist {m} [ugs.] crap [vulg.] rubbish [esp. Br.] [nonsense] bullshit [vulg.] tripe [coll.] garbage [fig.] bull [derived from bullshit] [Am.] [vulg.]

Re: WordSafety – Check a name for unwanted meanings in foreign languages

#155
post #71

So this seems to work for a very small subset of the words I typed. Also, it seems to only check against dictionary meaning and not cultural usage. "Tatsu" means "to stand" in Japanese, but is culturally used for erection. This is just an example, I tried a bunch which I know and none were flagged.

I think this is a case of 'the product is YOU!' notice the little box 'enter word here'? :P

That box doesn't seem to permit adding cultural referents / context. If we added all normal words that can have another meaning, it'd flag almost everything.

Re: WordSafety – Check a name for unwanted meanings in foreign languages

#156

"bite" is safe according to this tool. Any french speaker does a double take when they see that word though, especially in certain sentences. For reference: https://askafrenchguy.wordpress.com/2012/02/07/petite-bites-... Edit: Yes, I have submitted it to the database, it should get vetted eventually. A crowdsourced process for the vetting could be fun too!

And 7 Eleven in Sweden managed to make it even more dirty by using the headline "Bite sale!", which apparently means "Dirty dick!" in french. As if that wasn't bad enough, the ad was actually meant to sell sausages. To kids. Reference: http://z.cdn-expressen.se/images/a3/9b/a39b426464844e3ba6ef3...

"Oh thank heaven". This is so hilariously unfortunate. The funny part is that I really don't notice "bite" in this way if it's surrounded by English words. The tumblr blog listed downthread does nothing for me for example.

But if the surrounding words exist in French too, my brain invariably gets tricked into switching to French.

Re: WordSafety – Check a name for unwanted meanings in foreign languages

#157
post #25

Hey guys, I made this last week as a two-evening side project. Happy to see it posted here, thanks randall! I know the word lists aren't complete. This was the best I could do given the time constraint, the fact that I don't actually speak 19 languages... And also, after two evenings of googling dirty words, I started feeling like I'm about to acquire Tourette's in some unknown language ;) I'll update the database wi…

> I know the word lists aren't complete. This was the best I could do given the time constraint, the fact that I don't actually speak 19 languages... And also, after two evenings of googling dirty words, I started feeling like I'm about to acquire Tourette's in some unknown language ;)

Despite all that, I'm impressed by the level of completion for Bengali and Hindi. I tried a few variations of several common Bengali curses and all came up. Thanks for making this, and also for not limiting it to Romance and Germanic languages.

What sources did you use to compile the list of words?

Re: WordSafety – Check a name for unwanted meanings in foreign languages

#158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One detail to consider about Spanish is that each country has it local variation, so there are some words that are totally safe in some countries but have a totally different unwanted meaning in others. For example "coger" means "pick" in Span and "fuck" in Argentina. (If you say it in Argentina with a Spanish accent the you will not get into troubles, but the people will give a subtle weird look and someone will exp…

How do you say "pick" in Argentina? I've never learned a synonym for it.

Agarrar, tomar, levantar

Re: WordSafety – Check a name for unwanted meanings in foreign languages

#159
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

much less "bitenuker" which is highly offensive to those who speak either French or Dutch.

I'm Dutch and I know my offensive language. Never heard of that.

A Franco-Dutchman would pronounce it bete-neuker:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cqszqbd5cLg

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