Good morning, John.

Language is extremely bizarre. If I didn't know about languages and you tried to explain language to me, I don't know that I'd believe you. A set of sounds that allows two animals to communicate just a tremendous amount of information over a very short period of time. How do the sounds work? Well, sometimes like a single sound is one idea. Like, if I say, "eh," then you know what that means, but mostly, you take a bunch of sounds and you mash them up together into one thing and that has a meaning and that's a word, and then you take a bunch of those mashed up groups of sounds and you mash them up more and then you make a sentence—and that can have like a whole thought in it. Like, imagine one animal is like [Gibberish]. And then another one replies [Gibberish]. And then you fall in love. And then if people do that enough over 100,000 years or so, they, like, cure cancers and make the iPhone and take over the whole planet. The dry parts anyway, most of the wet parts are not ours yet. Let's leave it that way.

Now another thing, if you did get the idea of language across to me—a person who'd never heard about language before—I would not expect that if you separate two groups of people for not very long, at the end of that process, they will not be able to understand each other anymore. But that does happen. Language is constantly shifting and evolving and over enough time, languages completely separate from each other and that is the cause of both unquestionable extraordinary beauty and diversity and it's also one of the greatest barriers to human cross-cultural empathy. And it's also why in France, there are some newscasters talking about jobs being taken by Cat, I farted.

Phil Fish on Mastadon says, "life is extra surreal for french speakers right now because in french, phonetically, "chat gpt" sounds exactly like "cat, i farted" (chat, j'ai pété). everywhere, on TV, in the news, people going "cat, i farted" over and over with a straight face. is cat, i farted going to steal your job? how are schools dealing with cat, i farted? lawyer caught using cat, i farted. it's incredible."

But I asked people on Twitter, and French people reported that when they're talking about chat like the internet thing of a chat, they tend to say "tchat." That doesn't break the fun though, instead of Cat, I farted, it's Chat, I farted. I actually asked Chat, I farted if it knew about this. "Yes, I've heard that before! When pronounced in French, "ChatGPT" can sound humorously like, "chat j'ai pu00e9tu00e9," which translates to "cat I farted" It's a funny coincidence in the way different languages can make certain phrases sound." And then, since I knew there were, I asked ChatGPT if there were any other examples of similar situations. "Yes, there have been several instances. The Chevrolet Nova: This is a classic example. In Spanish, "no va" means "doesn't go." However, this story is more of an urban legend; the Nova actually sold well in Spanish-speaking countries. Pepsi: In China, Pepsi's slogan "Pepsi Brings You Back to Life" was initially translated as network error."

Still some glitches to work out. I did my own research here and it turns out it translates to "Pepsi Brings Your Ancestors Back From The Grave," which not great, but also not really what I meant. I want like brand names that had to be changed. And there are actually a lot of examples of those and this might be the part of the video where anybody under the age of maybe 13 should stop watching.

The Norwegian cheese brand Kavli needed a name change in Greece as that's a particularly vulgar term for penis. And while the Chevrolet Nova turned out to be a fine name in Spanish-speaking markets, the Mazda Laputa was not. Gerber baby food needed a name change in France as well since that in French means vomit. IKEA made a bit of a mistake with a bunk bed called the Gutvik, which, uh, in German, Gut is obviously good. I'll let you guess what vik is, which also became a problem for Vicks, a U.S. company that sells cold medicines. SEGA in Italian is also a sexual act, though one that is more often done alone. [SEGA Startup Sound] And look, English is not alone. They did decide to go on ahead with the Nintendo Wii, and honestly, they pulled it off.

You could make a very long video just of examples of stuff like this, and it's interesting the ones that turn out to be problems don't tend to be like fun little mistakes. They tend to be true vulgarity. And no one would say that saying "Cat, I farted" is true vulgarity, but despite that, it seems like a lot of people in France are solving this problem by instead of saying, "Tchat Gé Pé Té" or "Chat Gé Pé Té," they're just saying it phonetically in English. They're saying ChatGPT, which honestly France, do not let us down here. I know you love your language. Stick with it. Do the brave thing. Please call the most revolutionary language tool of this century Cat, I farted. Please. I believe in you. We need this.

John, I'll see you on Tuesday/