Story:how learning some German made me better at NAV consult

During many projects in various countries, I always had this impression that concepts like Sell-To Customer, Bill-To Customer and Ship-To Address are often seen as a bit of an arbitrary thing... users not fully understanding the concept, thinking "we can write any address on the invoices they want, why does it matter" and I had to always go in very technical explanations like if the headoffice is Sell-To to and the store is a Shipping Address, then report X Y Z will show different records than when the headoffice is Bill-To and the store is Sell-To.

Learning some German during doing some projects mainly in Austria (we settled down in Vienna, nice place and close enough to my native Budapest), also in Germany and a bit of Switzerland, and learning the language, I realized that here these are very clearly defined concept, I think even to some extent legal concepts even usable in lawsuits and stuff like that: Auftraggeber = order-giver = Sell-To, Rechnungsempfänger = invoice-receiver = Bill-To, Lieferadresse = Shipping Address.

Later on I have learned that these concepts are also very clear in EDIFACT D96A which is a UN-made international standard. So I guess this should also be clearly defined when people speak English. But often they are not.

Some more random linguistic musings, goes well with the morning coffee:

Lately I took a look at the Danish language layer in NAV because this is the only translation you can assume it is translated really correctly Because it is, I assume, done by the same people who develop it in English. Interestingly, Danish NAV calls the Sell-To Customer No. simply - Customer No. (Kundenr.).

Interesting thing that when Europeans develop a software in English, you would assume it is British, because they are closer. I mean OK it technically say ENU, English (United States), but you don't always have to take these seriously. But in this case yes. This is not the case and working in the UK was confusing a bit. General ledger = nominal ledger, or "the nominal". Inventory = stock. Inventory Reclassification, Transfer Order = Stock Movement. Physical Inventory = Stocktake. Customer Ledger = "debtors". There is actually an ENG language layer, but it is not actually "translated", so it is not very useful, so British users say one thing, then on the UI click on a very different thing, yet they do not complain much. But on the other hand, the ENU is not really "that" American - if it was, the Customer Ledger should be called Sales Ledger.

It is also very very interesting to take a look at the Italian language layer, because double-entry accouting was invented there so in many languages accountants use words of an Italian-Latin origin, so it is interesting to look at the original, so to speak. Debit is called "dare", which is "to give" in Latin. (I speak some Latin but Italian not.). Credit is "avere", which I think is etymologically related to the English "to have" and means something like that or maybe also "to get". My impression is that originally these were invented like 500 years ago for the customer ledger, not the general ledger? Debit = owe money or goods, Credit = demand money or goods?