What Does "Jopogo" Mean?

December 5, 2004 9:56 PM

Does the word "jopogo" mean something in other languages? A quick search shows a few pages in Czech, but the Babelfish doesn't give me any translation for it. Just wondering.
posted by brownpau to writing & language (9 comments total)

In russian the word would be "??????". I'm not sure what it means, but it does come up in google a couple of times. In the context it's usually "?????-??????", which from the context seems like a derogatory term for a black person. It might mean ass-like, since ???? is the word for ass, and the ending gives a hint to the fact that it is an adjective. Hopefully this is slightly helpful. I could help more if you could tell me the context.
posted by vodkadin at 12:15 AM on December 6, 2004

Damn .. the russian text didn't come out.
posted by vodkadin at 12:21 AM on December 6, 2004

Think "esperanto".
posted by RavinDave at 2:04 AM on December 6, 2004

Okay ... maybe not. Probably some variant of "zhopa".
posted by RavinDave at 3:35 AM on December 6, 2004

I've got one, too: tchau

Does anyone know what that means? I think it might be Portugese, but I couldn't find anything when I searched.
posted by knave at 7:52 AM on December 6, 2004

brownpau, knave: Could you possibly give at least a little context? Where/how did you run across these mysterious strings of letters? "Tchau" looks like a Germanized spelling of ciao, Italian for 'bye' (written chau in Argentina, where it's ubiquitous), but there's no way of knowing how likely that is with no context. And zhopogo (if you respell it that way) is not a Russian form.
posted by languagehat at 8:28 AM on December 6, 2004

Tchau is Portuguese. You pronounce it kinda like ciao and use it the same way. (There's no "ch" as in chair in Portuguese, so it's a creative spelling to get the same effect).
posted by wallaby at 8:30 AM on December 6, 2004

brownpau, knave: Could you possibly give at least a little context? Where/how did you run across these mysterious strings of letters?

The way the original question was phrased indicates brownpau is performing due diligence on a nonsense word for use as a product and/or domain name. A WHOIS search confirms this.

This, incidentally, is why smart sign language-related companies never use signs in their logo. What means something benign (or nothing at all) might be a terribly offensive gesture in another international sign language/regional dialect.
posted by Danelope at 10:52 AM on December 6, 2004

You, Danelope, are quite astute. I only wish I'd thought of asking the question first, before buying.
posted by brownpau at 11:33 AM on December 6, 2004