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Comment by pavlov | Hacker News Reader

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:

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.

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I'm so proud of you <3 http://i.imgur.com/bMQK9vU.png

Indeed your reply was the reason I made this, so thanks :)

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. :)

> 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?

For each language I used several random sources on the web, sort-of crosschecked for multiple spellings, etc.

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?!

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?"

These are brilliant:

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

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.

Or "root" in Australia.

Quick, somebody point me in the direction of some witty australian UNIX jokes.

What did the sysadmin buy her wife for Valentine's Day? A rootkit.

(Just made that one up... Not genuine Australian. Also, I can't tell jokes.)

well your jokes certainly fit.

There's an area of San Francisco that styles itself as 'the tender knob'. Oh the mirth.

Can't edit my original comment anymore, so here's analytics update #2, with OS statistics as requested:

http://wordsafety.com/img/analytics_2015-08-25_2207_os.jpg

And browser:

http://wordsafety.com/img/analytics_2015-08-25_2207_browser....

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 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!

Edit: grammar/spelling

>Spain has an entire verb tense that is not in Mexican Spanish.

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.

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'

In Colombia, the use of 'vos' means the person is from the region where sugarcane is cultivated, or the cities around.

That means Cali, Buenaventura and some others.

Yes, that's why I said "because of vosotros" in my post.

I thought it was used in Argentina at least?

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?'

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 :)

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

Agarrar, tomar, levantar

"Recoge" and "escoge" should work (first one for grabbing things, second for choosing things).

(Valgarity alert for Spanish speakers!)

Indeed. "Coger" is not found, but more universal vulgarities such as "puta", "verga", "mierda" are found.

¿Donde coges el autobús? - ranges from practical to vulgar and confusing.

I once witnessed a Dominican telling a very recent Mexican immigrant to "cogelo suave". The look did indeed range from shocked to confused.

¿Donde coges la buseta?

Perfectly normal here, even more confusing in other places.

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".)

How is the "coger" example different?

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.

I added the infamous case of the Mitsubishi PAJERO :P

what about the Chevy NOVA?

And Nissan Moco!

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 will be happy to help with arabic words

Don't hesitate to submit on the site, it's very welcome! (I'm going to vet them manually when I have a moment.)

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 ?

Hi thanks! This is really great! It would make me more careful to choose a name, and yes, naming is hard :))

Btw, no South East Asia language yet?

https://www.techinasia.com/dell-peju-leaks/

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. ;)

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).

Bimbo (the bread) doesn't flag the bad English meaning.

I'd be intrested to see the browser and OS stats.

can you describe how you built your site, what technologies you are using etc.. thanks!

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