pain also happens to be the French word for "bread".

"So what," you say, and rightly so. Well, I'd like to relate a little experience that changed my attitude toward the French word to bread:

A friend and I were touring around in Germany, enjoying the (theoretically) limitless speed of the Autobahn. Suddenly, while passing a line of trucks, we found ourselves next to this humongous (by European standards) truck. All of the truck's main body was painted bright fire engine red. On each side, a single word was painted in huge white block letters more than half the height of the available space:

PAIN

My friend just kind of gave a little gasp, while I was mentally floored for some seconds. A goodly portion of my field of view was red. Red like fire, red like the devil, red like blood. In the midst of this, four letters representing what may be the most unpleasant of sensations. The brief but vivid associations this conjured up felt like being in a short story by Edgar Allan Poe.

OK OK, we both speak some French, and we eventually realized what the truck was about, and it checked out with the French license plates and all, but it sure felt kind of strange for a while. Some otherwise unknown bakery in France has made a lasting impression on me.