Anyone find any real-world matches? I was able to get positives by typing in foreign curses directly, but couldn't find any startups with foreign curses in their name.
Not a startup, but yesterday I was impressed with the font Skolar, which name I mistakenly remembered as Skola, and apparently it's considered close enough to "Chola", which is Hindi for clitoris.
The "level of worriness" does go down (pun intended) when I type the font's correct name.
I think this should also do a phoneme based comparison, for example the photo sharing website Flickr is pronounced like this word (as a slang word it is well known) https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/flikker
The amazing thing about wix.com is that they went all-out with their marketing in Germany and embraced the phonetic similarity.
I'm not sure what audience they're aiming for by having the ads consist of people explaining that (and how) they wank -- with the obvious "twist ending" where they make it clear they're referring to using their product rather than masturbating. But I guess anyone turned off their product by the "racy" ads likely would have avoided it because of the name in the first place.
With the input box I suspect they want the database to be crowdsourced. I wonder if they vet the input, if we all try hard enough might we get hackernews into the swear list?
Is a start. How about death and failure type words? Muerta doesn't elicit any warning. And 'Nova' is famous for its Spanish meaning (apocryphal?) - words like that might be hard to catch.
Italian one needs work. It did not have 'minchia' in it, which is no longer even all that regional, AFAIK. Didn't have 'mona' either, although that could be foregiven as it's dialect in the Veneto.
It's "peepee" in English but you are likely to get a chuckle if you name your product "pipi". Back in 2006 Nintendo ran into this problem with the Wii ("wee" or "weewee" is also slang for urination eapecially among children.)
This was the first word I tried too. As a frenchman in the US I can't help but laugh every time I see "bite" used on a product. It's the most common slang for "dick" in french, everyone knows it. Juvenile, yes, but still hilarious. Examples: http://bitesubite.tumblr.com/archive
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.
"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.
I remember a native French speaker was kind of disturbed by the sentence "où est ma chatte?", which is the sample French sentence Alice thinks of in Alice in Wonderland when she speculates that mice might speak French or Latin instead of English. (In the original story, it was disturbing to the mouse, too, though for a different reason!)
(Edit: this site's database recognizes "chatte" as a concern in French.)
Yeah, I've had some fine time trying to remember most of polish swear words. But it will probably never properly take into account the variety of word "pierdolić".
I'd be really interested in knowing how do they do the phonetic matching. Things like, the nonexistent English word "bocket" sounding like Brazilian slang for blowjob ("boquete"), but only when spoken the way a Brazilian would.
I think this cross-pronouncing thing would actually be harder to tackle: It's more important to try to match the way users on their home locale would say the foreign term, than the way the foreign people would say it.
To illustrate what I mean, consider the word Skype, said in Portuguese, is pronounced as if it were spelt in English as "Shkuipy" (I mean [ʃkaj'pi]).
I'd be really interested in knowing how do they do the phonetic matching.
Honestly, the code for that sucks. It just looks for specific variations of letter combinations.
I guess a more robust approach would try to build up a real phonetic representation of the word, then apply various languages' orthographic rules to that to check for matches.
I'm no expert on phonetic matching, but a product I worked on many years ago used Soundex. (It's meant for English pronunciation, so you'd have to research other languages)
Soundex is optimized for collapsing the spelling of names into a common key and isn't so hot for general words. Metaphone would be a more useful matching algorithm. It also preserves a legible spelling so that you can pass the result onto further fuzzy matching stages like an edit distance measure.
The lack of phonetic matching is a problem - the most (in?)famous example of this was the Chevy Nova, which phonetically sounds like 'doesn't go' in spanish.
Regarding the Chevy Nova, I always found that story very hard to believe. While it may seem plausible for someone who does not speak Spanish, someone who does would quickly note the fact that "no va" is pronounced /no'βa/ (stress on the second syllable) while Nova would be pronounced /'no.βa/ (stress on the first syllable).
These two sounds would not be perceived by a Spanish speaker as being the same.
Nobody, to my mind's got this quite right yet so I'll give it a bash...:
MR2 = Ehm Air Duh ~~ Merde :) cuz the middle e is like the ai in air (near enough) and the last e is like the uh in duh (near enough) - Not a native speaker so caveat enunciator
Another interesting example for a soundex marching would be Coca Cola's failed energy drink "full throttle", which rrsembles the german " Volltrottel" (complete dumbass)
It would be nice this detected double meaning phrases, although it might be hard to implement.
In spanish many combinations of 'safe' words will generate very 'unsafe' meanings, probably many other languages too.
Yeah, it seems like it either doesn't match english words (probably because it assumes you already speak English since it's an English-language web site), or it is only looking for specific types of matches (swear words, etc.). I tried merder.com, since I know that "merde" is french for "shit" and it sounds like "murder.com". It caught "merde", but didn't catch "murder". I then tried "murder.com" and it was like, "Yep! Looks good! Go for it!" (I may be paraphrasing.)
Coincidentally cha1 ("1" here means the first tone in pinyin) is a sexual innuendo alluding to sexual intercourse. The character itself, which means "to insert", has nothing to do with sex in normal usage though. And most importantly, there is virtually zero resemblance between the pronunciation of "change" and that of "cha1".
> to have sex (lit. insert).
> Source: a long list of Chinese profanity on Wikipedia.[0]
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 with the words submitted here and through the form on the site. Thanks!
--
Edit -- here's Google Analytics for this site after 1 hour on the HN frontpage:
I've seen some words with bad meanings, like "cipa" means "polish: penis" according to your site, but it actually means "vagina" (quite the opposite ;) ). Is it good if I just submit better meanings ?
I tested my own name "Lucas" and it resulted in "ås". The site said that "ås" means "donkey" in swedish. But me being a native swede that is actually incorrect. The real meaning of the word "ås" is actually "esker" the ridge thing. The real word for "donkey" in swedish is "åsna" so probably it's only a typo. :)
PS: If you need some help with the swedish dict i could possibly help you or collect some friends to do it. :)
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 explain the local meaning later.)
It's definitely very important to realize that Spanish-speaking countries, while nominally speaking the same language, are very different. Spain has an entire verb tense that is not in Mexican Spanish. And unconfirmed example I have heard is pico de gallo. In Mexican Spanish it means something that's not too dissimilar from salsa, yet in some parts of South America, pico means penis. I heard there was an issue with a Nintendo DS game for children that revolved around cooking that assumed they were all the same and had a recipe for pico de gallo!
It would probably be most accurate to say that it's an extra person.
Verbs can be inflected in various languages for gender, number, person [which can include degrees of formality, respect, or social distance], voice, mood, tense, aspect, ergativity [an alternative to voice], evidentiality [how the speaker knows that the thing happened], and other things I'm probably forgetting.
Yes, I know. As far as I know, Mexican Spanish has all the same tenses as European Spanish but lacks a second person familiar plural, and hence the associated form of the verb in each tense.
The first person informal plural (vos, vosotros) form of verbs isn't used outside Spain. Or maybe it's just not used in Latin America. Source: high school Spanish.
There are parts of south america where vosotros is used, but I think what the parent was getting at is that it is not technically considered a 'tense', but rather a 'person' as in e.g. 'third person'
It's not just Spain either... Chile uses 'vosotros' as a sort-of-weird version of 'tu' (with some dropped sounds) e.g. 'como estas?' becomes 'como estai?' and sounding like 'como etai?'
Every spanish speaker can understand and speak Neutral Spanish. The one taught in schools, universities and spoken in dubbed movies. In the same way every english speaker can understand and speak Hollywood English.
In a way, the dialects of spanish are even more regular than the dialects of english. For instance, the spelling is the same of everybody (regulated by The Real Academia Español) and almost everything is spelling phonetically, so the changes in pronunciation are quite regular. If you understand written spanish you can master any pronunciation just by learning a few regular rules.
There are differences in tenses and plenty of slang, but this can be sidestepped by speaking formally (where the are no variation in tenses and there is little difference in vocabulary).
How is this different from English? Another poster mentioned "knob" being offensive in the UK but it's an everyday word here in Seattle. (It means "door handle".)
The joys of slang. You could just as easily use the sentence "I need to fit a new doorknob" or "Twiddle that knob there to turn the volume up" in the UK and not get any funny looks. It just so happens that if you said "Can I twiddle your knobs" to a group of sound engineers they might take it the wrong way.
You may want to look at slang as well. I tried both "knob" and "bell end". It said both were safe. Maybe they may be safe-ish in the US, but in Britain they are definitely slang words that could result in quite a chuckle if you named your app that.
> 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?
After all the insane insults that I'm too shy to repeat, there's an awesome deadpan note at the end: "Learn to avoid these Hindi Bad Words in your Hindi conversation." Thanks for teaching them first?!
Those are some wonderfully imaginative insults. I did like that near the end, after endless filth, they've put "Why are you boring me with this useless narrative?"
There must've been some giggles in the 80's music scene.
Teri Jhanten Kaat kar tere mooh par laga kar unki french beard bana doonga: I will cut your pubic hair and stick them on your face and make a goatee on your face.
That's very cool. Interesting to see. I just thought that there would be a lot more returning visits. I know that I've used the site more than once, and now have it bookmarked in my "tools" folder. ;)
It's a neat idea, however, I think this sort of an effort can more effective if open sourced. In fact, it's probably better you open-source it before someone else comes along and does it. To clarify, I am not talking about the UX but only the lists themselves.
If you do go this route, my 2 cents are two keep it JSON formatted and maybe add a severity flag to each word for words like "git" which aren't so bad if you product is targeting non-english audiences while words like "fuck" are really bad irrespective of the audience you are targeting. Taken in conjunction with the population size of the language, this could generate a good score for word safety.
I added two common examples from the infosec and node communities: 'nonce' (which means pedophile in proper English) and 'gyp' (which is a pejorative for gypsy).
It would be really hard to capture this kind of double meaning that only applies to a certain product category... "Doesn't go" is certainly an unwanted association for a car, but it wouldn't matter for most products.
To make it more complicated, "nova" actually has the same astronomical meaning in Spanish as in English:
298 comments
[ 287 ms ] story [ 5261 ms ] threadThe "level of worriness" does go down (pun intended) when I type the font's correct name.
I'm not sure what audience they're aiming for by having the ads consist of people explaining that (and how) they wank -- with the obvious "twist ending" where they make it clear they're referring to using their product rather than masturbating. But I guess anyone turned off their product by the "racy" ads likely would have avoided it because of the name in the first place.
Very, very useful, although specific to American English.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CMU_Pronouncing_Dictionary
I've succeeding in using it to solve puzzles that had to do with how words were pronounced, as opposed to how they were spelled.
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!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cqszqbd5cLg
I wonder were the roots of that is?
The immature side of me sees a great tool for picking immature names for online games that won't be flagged.
Reference: http://z.cdn-expressen.se/images/a3/9b/a39b426464844e3ba6ef3...
But if the surrounding words exist in French too, my brain invariably gets tricked into switching to French.
(Edit: this site's database recognizes "chatte" as a concern in French.)
I think this cross-pronouncing thing would actually be harder to tackle: It's more important to try to match the way users on their home locale would say the foreign term, than the way the foreign people would say it.
To illustrate what I mean, consider the word Skype, said in Portuguese, is pronounced as if it were spelt in English as "Shkuipy" (I mean [ʃkaj'pi]).
Honestly, the code for that sucks. It just looks for specific variations of letter combinations.
I guess a more robust approach would try to build up a real phonetic representation of the word, then apply various languages' orthographic rules to that to check for matches.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soundex
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaphone
Baca returns nothing, Baka returns 'idiot/er in Japanese'.
These two sounds would not be perceived by a Spanish speaker as being the same.
EDIT: Though I'm apparently wrong and this is a myth: http://www.snopes.com/business/misxlate/nova.asp
(of course, the classic Spanish screw-up is the Mitsubishi Pajero, which has no excuse whatsoever: that's unambiguously the Mitsubishi Wanker)
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/emmerder
A bit of trivia, there's a radio that is called NRJ which sounds like 'énergie' when you say it (in French)
MR2 = Ehm Air Duh ~~ Merde :) cuz the middle e is like the ai in air (near enough) and the last e is like the uh in duh (near enough) - Not a native speaker so caveat enunciator
> to have sex (lit. insert).
> Source: a long list of Chinese profanity on Wikipedia.[0]
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandarin_Chinese_profanity
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 with the words submitted here and through the form on the site. Thanks!
--
Edit -- here's Google Analytics for this site after 1 hour on the HN frontpage:
http://wordsafety.com/img/analytics_2015-08-25_1736.jpg
This is a site that had essentially zero traffic before HN, so I figured this would be a potentially interesting glimpse into HN's audience.
PS: If you need some help with the swedish dict i could possibly help you or collect some friends to do it. :)
(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 explain the local meaning later.)
Edit: grammar/spelling
Are you sure you mean tense? The verb has an additional form in each tense because of vosotros, but there are no additional tenses so far as I know.
Verbs can be inflected in various languages for gender, number, person [which can include degrees of formality, respect, or social distance], voice, mood, tense, aspect, ergativity [an alternative to voice], evidentiality [how the speaker knows that the thing happened], and other things I'm probably forgetting.
That means Cali, Buenaventura and some others.
Also: tire / tire shop: llanata / llanteria (mexico), neumatico / (tienda de) vulcanizacion (chile). Corn: maiz (mexico), choclo (chile). Car: coche (mexico), auto (chile). etc etc etc
(I'm not latin, I just like traveling there, so dont take the above as gospel :)
In a way, the dialects of spanish are even more regular than the dialects of english. For instance, the spelling is the same of everybody (regulated by The Real Academia Español) and almost everything is spelling phonetically, so the changes in pronunciation are quite regular. If you understand written spanish you can master any pronunciation just by learning a few regular rules.
There are differences in tenses and plenty of slang, but this can be sidestepped by speaking formally (where the are no variation in tenses and there is little difference in vocabulary).
Indeed. "Coger" is not found, but more universal vulgarities such as "puta", "verga", "mierda" are found.
Perfectly normal here, even more confusing in other places.
How is the "coger" example different?
(Just made that one up... Not genuine Australian. Also, I can't tell jokes.)
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?
This Hindi site was definitely my favorite:
http://www.hindilearner.com/hindi_bad_words.html
After all the insane insults that I'm too shy to repeat, there's an awesome deadpan note at the end: "Learn to avoid these Hindi Bad Words in your Hindi conversation." Thanks for teaching them first?!
Gaand main lassan: Garlic in ass
Is this an insult or an old medical remedy?
Lundoos: Born into this world from a dick
You really have a word for this?
Toto: Penis
There must've been some giggles in the 80's music scene.
Teri Jhanten Kaat kar tere mooh par laga kar unki french beard bana doonga: I will cut your pubic hair and stick them on your face and make a goatee on your face.
Ohkaay
http://wordsafety.com/img/analytics_2015-08-25_2207_os.jpg
And browser:
http://wordsafety.com/img/analytics_2015-08-25_2207_browser....
If you do go this route, my 2 cents are two keep it JSON formatted and maybe add a severity flag to each word for words like "git" which aren't so bad if you product is targeting non-english audiences while words like "fuck" are really bad irrespective of the audience you are targeting. Taken in conjunction with the population size of the language, this could generate a good score for word safety.
Btw, no South East Asia language yet?
https://www.techinasia.com/dell-peju-leaks/
To make it more complicated, "nova" actually has the same astronomical meaning in Spanish as in English:
https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nova
So it's fine in some contexts, bad in some very specific context. Someone smarter than me will probably crack problems like this with AI...
http://i.imgur.com/tnjNMs1.png
> This has since been debunked.
http://www.snopes.com/business/misxlate/nova.asp
But I like the idea and will submit a few words
I was going to have that as part of my company name until I discovered that (tineh is a transliteration of the word for "fire" in Irish).
Interesting.