Unfortunate English words

Japanese Language Questions
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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.

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

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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.

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

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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.

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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.

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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:

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

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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”..

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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:

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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

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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:

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

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