Italians are weird.

Just thinking about Italians and how weird they are. Words that you think are perfectly innocent can be confused as naughty body parts and words you KNOW mean naughty body parts are sometimes perfectly innocent. Allow me to explain.
Penne is a delicious pasta, named so because it is a small tube cut on the diagonal, resembling a fountain pen. Pene, on the other hand, is a penis (no explanation needed here). Note the subtle difference in spelling. Note the even subtler difference in pronunciation (you'll just have to trust me on this one). You can see where this might cause quite a stir, especially because one of my favorite dishes to order in Italy was a big steaming plate of PeNNe.
Then there is the word culo. Now most of you already know this one, as we are close to our friends south of the border and the word is exactly the same in Spanish. This word is not OK to use in general conversation and is considered very uncouth. However, interestingly enough, you can say this word in front of your 90-year old Italian grandma if you just use it properly. Apparantly, having 'culo' means having good fortune or luck. For example, if this grandma were to explain to you that she still has all of her real teeth, you would almost be obligated to tell her she has culo. And no one would look at you like the uneducated idiot foreigner that you were. This kind of thing would never fly here in America, especially considering the fact that most of us here in this great nation are obese. So, telling your grandma "she got ass" would not only be incredibly rude, but it could also ring true, making it even ruder.

We here in America keep our butts away from our fortune, and our male genitalia far from our food, both in physical location and in pronunciation. I for one have always used 'hot dog' as the prefered nomenclature, as 'weiner' would clearly violate this rule. I guess we're just not as obsessed with the penis. Another example of penile inclination in Italy... the word 'cazzo.' This is equivalent to 'dick' in English. However, the usage makes it much more translatable to 'f*ck." For example, "cazzo, I dropped my book on my toe." I, being the uneducated idiot foreigner would much more likely say: "cazzo, I just ordered pene."