Yes. Communication is hard enough as it is, without having to second guess more things.

But it opened my eyes to the complexity of even attempting to define what the word means to different groups of people.

I don't know in italian, but in spanish we don't have a word for n-er, we just have a word for the color black. That word (negro) is syntactically similar to n-er in english, which produces lots of misunderstandings with english speakers. So again, communication is really hard.