Language warning

If you’re playing with languages or expanding into other countries, have a serious Google Translate session before committing to anything.

Years back, ConvertKit attempted a rebrand by appropriating a sacred word, Seva, as it’s new name, and faced backlash (then reverted back to ConvertKit).

More recently, I’ve been noticing companies particularly in the climate space using cool-sounding foreign words as part of their messaging, and thought I’d dig this one out of the archives, with extras.

English words can mean some funny things in other languages, and cool sounding foreign-words can mean very different things in English:

• In Germany: the english word “mist” translates to crap.
• In Latvian: Majas (meaning “home”) is pronounced “My ass”.
• In French: Préservatif means condom.
• The Polish word for give is spelt “die”.
• In Sweden: The english word dot (as in .com) is pronounced “prick”.
• The Italian word “bimbo” means baby boy.
• If you give someone a “gift” in Germany, you’ve given them poison.
• If you say “pay” in Indonesia, you’ve actually just said “kiss”
• If you say “kiss” in Sweden, you’ve actually just said “pee”
• If you want to say “luck” in Polish or “speed” in Swedish, just say “fart”.
• If you want to say “fart” in French, you just say “pet”
• And finally, the word for final in Swedish is “slut”.

Check everything, and have fun 🙂