Some people claim that any desire for precision in communication is just nitpicking. Don't ask those people for directions to their house, because you'll just get lost. Don't ask those people to do anything complex, like take out someone's appendix or even prune a shrub, because they don't understand and don't want to understand. If you can't say it simply, they'll tell you, don't say it. What a lot of them miss is that there's a difference between "simple" and "incompletely specified", and a lot of them mistake the latter for the former. This is to say nothing of the joys of subtlety, which are lost on persons with that style of attitude.
This is not, by the way, to say that I am any sort of expert on subtlety. I doubt that anyone with a good case of ADD is an expert on subtlety. But I'm not entirely innocent of understanding.
On, on to Peeveland...
The Italians have a number of creamy, custardy things they make. One of them is Zabaglione, which seems to come out as Sabayon in French (and I dunno what in English). Another is Mascarpone. Please permit me to attract your attention to the spelling of this name. I frequently hear people pronounce it "Mars-Capone", turning it into the headline up there, which it ain't. Please don't.
Another thing the Italians eat is Finocchio, which comes out in English as Florence fennel. Florence (bulbing) fennel is just wonderful. If they didn't want three bucks a pound for it at the supermarket, I'd buy a lot more of it. My problem here is not the price, but rather the fact that the sign always says "ANISE". Horsepucky! Anise is Pimpinella anisum, used almost exclusively for its seeds. Fennel is Foeniculum vulgare, and Florence fennel (if memory serves) is var. or subsp. dulce or maybe azoricum. It is used exclusively for the bulblike structure at the base of the plant. Notice, not even the same genus as anise, much less the same species. Feh!
As long as we're on that note, I should point out that yucca root is good for washing your laundry and your hands; you certainly wouldn't want to eat it. The stuff that's usually labelled "yucca" in the supermarket is YUCA, cassava, Manihot esculenta the last time I looked, the same root they make tapioca out of if memory serves. Again, not only not the same species, not even the same genus, and even less closely related than the last pair. (At least the last two are both umbels; yuca is in euphorbs and yucca is in the agave family. DOUBLE-feh!)
Follow this link to a set of small notes about words that don't mean what people seem to think they mean.
Another thing you'll hear, if you listen to people talking, is "is is". (There, I've managed to say "is", 3 times running.) The usual construction runs something like this: "The reason why, is, is because...." (That sentence fragment also contains another error: a reason is that , not "because".)
These constructions are different from the ones where "was" or "is" can legitimately be followed by "was" or "is". Here are a few examples: "What is, is; what is not, may yet be." "What the reason for the attack was is unclear." "What that is, is a trunk." Not particularly elegant; but not incorrect, either.
Another one, something you'll see in print more than you'll hear it in conversation, is exemplified in the following sentence: "Born in Chicago, at the age of three his family moved to California."
This one really grits my teeth. As written, the sentence states that someone's family was born in Chicago, and moved when it was three years old. Not, mind you, when the someone was three years old. It also implies that the someone moved, but in fact only his family is mentioned. That's bad bad bad writing! If you're going to use a construction like this one, please check it to be sure it makes sense! In this particular construction, the subject of the sentence should follow the comma pretty closely. The example is slightly more difficult than most, because there's a modifier in between -- the actual subject is "his family".
I would probably rewrite the sentence to eliminate the construction, but you could leave it, if you wanted to. "Born in Chicago, he grew up in California, where his family moved when he was three years old." Notice that the subject of the sentence ("he") is now immediately after the comma.
As I think of it, I will put it here. For the moment, however, the bits above must serve.