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Mayday comes from French m'aidez which is pronounced similarly, and simply means "help me!"
A lot of naval radio lingo is based on poorly pronounced French.
Source: Certified radio operator. I don't speak French, but I still need to say "Seelonce fini" (probably not spelled like that) from time to time. And there's the periodic "securitee"-broadcasts.
There's also "pan pan", but I'm not sure if that's French.
EDIT: It's also from French, derived from "panne"
Piggybacking off of this one, the reason we say "niner" in the radio to mean "nine" is to prevent it from being mistaken for the German word for no, nein.
The Pilot/Controller Glossary also insists you pronounce "five" as "fife." Good Luck, With That.
Why five as fife?
Partially because NATO has members that don't speak English as a first language and how else do you clarify how to pronounce "five" without resorting to IPA? It's kind of why they insist 4 is pronounced "Fo-wer."
The v sound is so soft that communication grade radios will sand it off so it sounds like "fie" or "fah" depending. The vowel sound is similar to "nine", add in some static or pushing the PTT a little too slow and you might mistake "iev" for "ien", another reason to say niner and to NOT say fiver.
Insisting that you say "Climb and maintain Fife thousand Fife hundred, turn left heading One Fife Niner" makes sure it sounds like words on the far end of the radio.
I've also seen some glossaries insist 3 is pronounced "tree" because pronouncing fricatives strong enough to come across on the radio is hard for some NATO member states.