Unfortunate English words

Japanese Language Questions
1

Are there any English words that make Japanese-speakers snicker? Like, a word that means one thing in English, but a completely different thing in Japanese?

What made me think of this question [potential adult content warning] -

There’s a gay guy a friend of mine in Japan knows who likes to dress up as a woman and call himself Diana (for 大穴) (I know that’s not how you really even say that). Now I’m imagining the “Biggus Dickus” scene in Life of Brian.

Side note - it must be really hard to think up international brand names that don’t mean something unfortunate in any language.

2

Starting out off topic. In Swedish “kiss” means “pee”.

3

Conversely I know of a Japanese word that makes English speakers snicker. (actually nvm just me)

空気 makes me think of cookies, okay shoot me nao.

4

The word ま〇こ can also be German and means “deficiency” or “shortcoming” :stuck_out_tongue:

5

That word can have the connotation of 下手 in Spanish.
But more literally of having no hands, which is somehow still related to 手.

6

I surprised my Japanese tutor when she told me the ”あそ” was common phrase for confirming you understand , and I told her German’s also “ach so” often pronounced ahh so.

7

Well in Portuguese, さかな (written like sacana in Portuguese) means “bastard”.

And かのじょ sounds exactly like “que nojo” which means “how disgusting” :joy:

8

I always though that もし もし was funny as a German. As it sounds similar to a colloquial expression for lady parts.

9

It’s off topic but the word for polygamy 一夫多妻 (いっぷたさい) sounds very nasty in portuguese!

It’s something kinda like “get out of here you harlot”..

10

There are too many Japanese words that are unfortunate in Spanish. :stuck_out_tongue:

Not really a word, but a movie: Tenkuu no Shiro Laputa (Castle in the Sky) - MyAnimeList.net

There’s also the Japanese name, Marika. :eyes:

11

あの “Ano” is pronounced just like that in Spanish, means butthole.

Something goes off in my brain everytime I have to say something with that such as あの日

12

Now that I think about it, we didn’t really have that many incidents in Japanese class with similar sounding words, and it was mostly 12-18 year-old people. :stuck_out_tongue:

Although it did happen from time to time. :sweat_smile:

13

Peoples brains were already too fried trying to learn japanese to be able to make jokes hahaha