‘Language Blunders’ Archive

Microsoft Names New Search Engine “Disease” May 29, 2009 No Comments

Microsoft’s announced the name of their new search engine. It’s called Bing. Interestingly enough, while there are several meanings for “Bing” in Mandarin, one of the more common definitions is “Disease“.

病 = disease
The character part 疒, which itself is without independent meaning as a full word, stands for diseases and words associated with diseases.
先天病 = xian(1)tian(1) [...]

Microsoft names product after female genitalia May 19, 2009 1 Comment

Talk about a total fail. Microsoft names it’s lasted product Cibai… Which apparently, isn’t an acronymn for anything, they just like the name.
 
Well, it turns out that in Singapore and Malaysia, Cibai is a cuss word that describes the female genitalia in vulgar terms.
Cibai’ is a a Chinese dialect (specifically, Hokkien) term for vagina, and [...]

 

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