Quote Originally Posted by Jean-Francois
Oh, it happens all the time. In Hong Kong, a lot of Chinese would use Engeslesh to replace that particular word. But if the person is bad in Engeslesh, then in most situtations another word with the same meaning or sound will be applied. For example, if I forgot how to write prostitute (妓) in Chinese, I would use the word chicken (雞) instead. How can a hooker be related to a chicken?

Well, there are two school of thoughts, as usual ...
For Mandarin-speaking people, the words prostitute and chicken have the same pronounciation (or very similar ???).

For Cantonese people, it is more about the common characteristic of the meanings between 妓 and 雞. According to some Hong Kong guys, prostitutes in general sound like a chicken when they are working ... Cuck! Cuck! Cuck! Cuck! Cuck! Yeah ... something like that ...
Heh, now that's pretty interesting. That's something that us westerners don't have to face, although we end up with a lot of misspelled words. Either way it's not such a good thing.