NULL point zero five!

[0xdeadbeef]

Recently one town in Austria announced to change its name from "Fucking" to "Fugging", despite it's pronounced differently in German.

Only the first syllable is pronounced more like "foo" - but I guess that's not so much different from what a Scot would pronounce it like - and I doubt that many German native speakers won't get the reference. Partly because the German word is nearly the same as they have the same (old) German root (more or less just u <-> i).
By the way, the name is not changed because anybody of the natives is offended but simply because they are tired of the tourists coming there, making photos and stealing the town sign. Germans/Austrians are not easily offended regarding suggestive family and town names. We have our own share of these.

[TimFox]

I kinda thought that (modern) German might be the language plagued most by confusingly used anglicisms until I learned that Japanese is even worse. E.g. the word for "bread" (but also for "frying pan") is パン (pan) derived from the English "pan". Dunno where they got the idea that bread is fried in a pan or whatever this is supposed to mean.

French?  French for bread is "pain", pronounced as paan, or thereabouts.

Jon
[/quote]

Actually, the standard explanation of the Japanese word for "bread" is that it comes from the Portuguese "pão", which is a cognate of the French word "pain".  There was little contact between France and Japan before the Meiji era.  "Arbito" is the only loan from German with which I am familiar.


[/quote]

[newbrain]

There are a lot of words in different languages which sound the same or even are written the same, but having completely different meanings, sometimes naughty. For example, the German word for curve is "Kurve", but a Romanian would think you're talking about a prostitute. Do you like mocca (the coffee variant)? In Hungarian it means "for free". Recently one town in Austria announced to change its name from "Fucking" to "Fugging", despite it's pronounced differently in German.

Ah, the joy of having false friends...
With Swedish and Italian there's quite a bunch!

In Swedish "fika" means "a longish pause, usually with coffee and some sweets", while in Italian "fica" is the vulgar term for female genitalia (same as "cunt" but also a rude word to indicate a beautiful woman).
This is extra fun when you are given the task to"bring some fika" (as in bringing the aforementioned sweets) and you explain it to your Italian wife.
She will probably hit you with something heavy, procuring you what in Italy is known as a "fitta" (a sharp, intense and unexpected pain - fit).
In Swedish, of course, "fitta" is the vulgar word for female genitalia, so it all makes sense, she was only trying to help.

Remember: do not try to make amends by promising to bring her a "tröja" (sweater), as in Italian "troia" is the rude word for a female prostitute (lit: sow, somewhat vulgar).

[thinkfat]

Not to forget the German "Knüller" and the similar sounding Swedish expression.

[Mr. Scram]

I've seen several videos where a person pronounces 0.05, for example, as NULL point zero five.

Is this expression common in certain countries?  Technically speaking, null is not zero.  It's an absence of value and zero is a value.

The word for zero in many languages is derived from the Latin nulla or nulla figura, meaning "nothing" or "no number". The difference between zero and null was not defined as both were the same thing. I'd be hesitant to flat out claim it's wrong without first declaring a very specific context.

[SparkyFX]

In the context of SQL databases "NULL" means "no value", but not "Zero" (as in number "0"). These distinctions play a huge role in any programming/query language and how these things are interpreted need to be defined in the syntax definition. Trying to apply colloquial understanding is a very slippery slope.

[S. Petrukhin]

Who knows the history of why in many countries the date is written starting from the year, but the time starts from the hour?
And why is the postal address written in the opposite direction to the route?

[S. Petrukhin]

There are a lot of words in different languages which sound the same or even are written the same, but having completely different meanings, sometimes naughty. For example, the German word for curve is "Kurve", but a Romanian would think you're talking about a prostitute. Do you like mocca (the coffee variant)? In Hungarian it means "for free". Recently one town in Austria announced to change its name from "Fucking" to "Fugging", despite it's pronounced differently in German.

Ah, the joy of having false friends...
With Swedish and Italian there's quite a bunch!

In Swedish "fika" means "a longish pause, usually with coffee and some sweets", while in Italian "fica" is the vulgar term for female genitalia (same as "cunt" but also a rude word to indicate a beautiful woman).
This is extra fun when you are given the task to"bring some fika" (as in bringing the aforementioned sweets) and you explain it to your Italian wife.
She will probably hit you with something heavy, procuring you what in Italy is known as a "fitta" (a sharp, intense and unexpected pain - fit).
In Swedish, of course, "fitta" is the vulgar word for female genitalia, so it all makes sense, she was only trying to help.

Remember: do not try to make amends by promising to bring her a "tröja" (sweater), as in Italian "troia" is the rude word for a female prostitute (lit: sow, somewhat vulgar).

In Russian, one rude phrase can be scolded, praised, and admired. We have a joke: the german engineer could not understand how the russians fix this <expletive 1> with this <expletive 2>, while <expletive 1> and <expletive 2> are interchangeable. 

[glinjik]

In Russian адин =1 первый =first but when counting 1=раз