Linguistics is an amazing discipline (one of the reasons why I started loving Noam Chomsky's works when I was at university…), but linguistic conventions are also amazingly funny things.
The best thing about languages is indeed the fact that, at times, a word has one meaning in one language and a completely different one in another.
Some Russian words can be hilarious for Italians: one example is "Kacca", pronounced as "Kassa" and meaning "cash desk" or "counter".
In Italian "kacca" sounds indeed like "cacca", that is "shit".
This obviously offers numerous photo opportunity to Italian tourists visiting the country, but, when applied to the banners indicating the money exchange rates, it becomes almost a political slogan hinting at the fact that money is shit.
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