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On 18/08/2011 13.52, Axel Kittenberger wrote:
There is also the Nissan "Qashqai". I have no clue about its selling records in Italy, but that word sounds almost as "cascai" ("I fell"), such as in the sentence "I fell downstairs" or "I fell from a bridge"!Dimiter> Don't worry about it. There would be always someone complaining... He isn't complaining. He doesn't actually care, its just a friendly tip that a bad chosen name get be a stopper. Don't be so fast to diss other claiming their just complaining. Philippe> I think it is hard to come with a name that hasn't a negative sense in Philippe> one language or the other... :-) Yes, but although majority-thinking isn't cool either, with english you got a quite a big speech-community affected. Peter> Famously the Toyota "MR2" sports car just-about translates phonetically to "shit" in French. Or there is the Chevrolet Nova that surprisingly didn't sell well in the spanish speaking countries - literally meaning no-va: Doesn't go/work.
To be honest the "s" in "cascai" has a sound more like in "sleep", whereas in "qashqai" is more similar to the "s" in "sheep", but this difference is only notable in standard Italian. In many italian dialects or regional variants the difference for the listener is minimal (worse: it gives an emphatic tone to the word, since it seems it is pronounced idiomatically on-purpose to make people laugh!!)
Anyway the first time I saw an advertisement of it, I couldn't stop laughing! It shows quite a lack of local pre-marketing research! :-)
-- Lorenzo