I used to work on a San Francisco team with a Zurich counterpart, mostly staffed with people of Italian descent. There was a quite confusing situation once involving a misunderstanding of my use of "terrific"; they thought I was calling something horrifyingly bad. Another such situation went something like this:

Me: "I tried what you suggested and now everything's hunky-dory."

Them, 12 hours later: "Well if you're going to complain about my suggestion, I wish you'd have at least explained what was wrong with it.