I’m currently on lesson 1 of Genki 1, and I am quizzing myself on the names of occupations using Anki. I got to the word for “housewife” and I went to WordHippo to type it in to quickly hear how it’s pronounced (I keep it tabbed in Safari bc I use it so often), and…WordHippo says しゅふ means “sh\*t” in English. A quick Google told me that is NOT correct (obviously), but I am understandably curious as to why WordHippo is SO wrong on this one when I’ve found it to be reliable in the past. Is WordHippo not a good resource or is someone on the staff there playing a very well-hidden joke?
(Mods, please take this down if not allowed; I wasn’t sure this belonged in the daily questions thread or not, and I’ll move it there if this isn’t the place for it!)
3 comments
I use [jisho](https://jisho.org) as my dictionary
I think you must have typed [しゅうふ](https://www.wordhippo.com/what-is/dynamic-translation/b9df0cb22d7798cce10703c888b30513c1b42130.html) and not [しゅふ](https://www.wordhippo.com/what-is/the-meaning-of/japanese-word-9d0d38f57269be2ca445505c5db913ef2e723607.html)
Not entirely sure where the “shit” comes from though, on jisho the only match for しゅうふ is 醜婦 meaning “ugly woman”.
EDIT: I’m wrong, しゅふ (in kana) does give shit as well: https://www.wordhippo.com/what-is/dynamic-translation/0f31a912703613fa502264cc3642e9ffc1cd876c.html
I searched using the kanji above which gave the right result.
That does seem suspicious. Probably a bogus fuzzy matching I’d guess.
Personally I try forvo when I want pronunciations: https://forvo.com/search/%E4%B8%BB%E5%A9%A6/ja/
Apparently, writing slightly difficult words in hiragana does not translate well. For example, if the word “あした – tomorrow” is at level 1, the word “しゅふ – housewife” is at level 3.
In other words, the child learns the meaning of the word “しゅふ” and the kanji for “主婦” at about the same time. Thus, there are many Japanese words that are never expressed in hiragana because you are almost certain to have learned that kanji when you express it.
Apparently, they can only be translated correctly in kanji. From what I have found, some highly accurate translation websites can translate hiragana as well.