Posted on 05/29/2014 8:58:37 AM PDT by Signalman
Edited on 05/29/2014 9:18:35 AM PDT by Admin Moderator. [history]
(Excerpt) Read more at liveleak.com ...
An international treaty under the auspices of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) requires that all pilots flying internationally be able to communicate in English. One of more famous stories in that regard was a Lufthansa pilot on the ground at a German airport complaining that he had to speak English while in Germany. A British voice came on the air to remind him who had won the war.
Learn English. Check out the Tower blasting Iberia at JFK.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lOc6MM2jsTE
2,600! We don’t have that many characters here... close, but still....
May Day! May Day! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmOTpIVxji8
It’s not just pilots/aircrew from Asia. Years ago, during the Bosnia operation, I was an ops adviser for my particular aircraft at the combined air operations center (CAOC) in Vicenzia, Italy. All of our business, airborne and on the ground, had to be conducted in English.
Arriving at work one morning, an RAF counterpart asked me, “Did you hear about that AWACS mission crew commander (MCC) who got fired last night?” When I told him I hadn’t he gave me the details. Apparently, something came up and the CAOC Director had to get on the radio with the MCC, a Norwegian.
Apparently, the Norwegian MCC spoke even less English than the Air China crew and after about 20 minutes of non-communication, the night shift director (an American O-6) finally told him to “shut up” and put the “senior English speaker” on the frequency. It turned out to be an American who was one of the strike controllers. They resolved the issue in about a minute and operations returned to normal.
In the morning, the Colonel briefed the American Lt Gen who ran the CAOC during the day. He called the NATO AWACS wing in Gilenkirchen and tore the wing commander a new one. After that, every NATO AWACS MCC I heard on the radio seemed to be an American, a Brit, or a German, Dane or Dutch guy who spoke flawless English.
Working with the French AWACS was another matter entirely. The French had just acquired their E-3s and had no prior experience in the platform. When you talked to them, you typically reached a student on the console who had an instructor looking over his shoulder and another trainee observing as well.
The Brits, bless their heart, figured out the best way to minimize the “threat” from the French AWACS. They developed an ops plan that assigned the Frog E-3 to the orbit over the Adriatic, where they were only allowed to “control” the tanker tracks. And it wasn’t very hard to convince the American three star to buy off on the plan. The French weren’t quite as bad as the Air China crew, but it could be pretty darn close.
Scouts Out! Cavalry Ho!
Fascinating, I had never heard this, and I've studied Chinese Language History. Here an excerpt from Wikipedia:
Emerging in Sumer in the late 4th millennium BC (the Uruk IV period), cuneiform writing began as a system of pictographs. In the third millennium, the pictorial representations became simplified and more abstract as the number of characters in use grew smaller, from about 1,000 in the Early Bronze Age to about 400 in Late Bronze Age (Hittite cuneiform). The system consists of a combination of logophonetic, consonantal alphabetic and syllabic signs.[2]I read the wikipedia article on Chinese Characters and there is no mention of a connection with cuneiform. In fact there is a history of older and older versions of Chinese going back to script written on bones for divination (Oracle Script), but this was over a thousand years after early ceneiform.
I found this site that makes this claim:
"Only five independent writing systems have been produced in the entire human history. Sumerian, Egyptian, Harappan, Mayan, and Chinese. Among them only Chinese has survived into modern age. All others have long since ceased to be functional. From Egyptian and Sumarian, the proto-Canaanite was developed in 1750 BC and became precursor of all the alphabetic languages
I read what I know in a book years ago. They had a pic of an archaeology artifact that was dug up of a clay tablet that was a cross between cuneiform and Chinese.
How about those H1 visas? If you ever did wonder how so many flaming screw ups take place in business and other settings this is how it is done.
I chaired a meeting that looked like the UN yesterday. They nod their heads like they understand what you are telling them but can hardly repeat a word back. I think many of the group got their Phd by attrition, relationships or the profs just gave up and graduated them.
Thinking about it now it would seem plausible that some Babylonians would travel east for trade along the Silk Road or what ever it was at that time and bring their language with them.
Paul Harvey read off a similar story.
A British Airways plane landed in Munich and the pilot was having difficulty finding the gate. The ground controller got increasingly frustrated with the pilot. He then asked if this pilot had ever been to Munich.
The pilot answered “yes, in 1944 but we didn’t land”.
The ground controller suddenly got very polite.
I remember that one, too. Good story.
Priceless!
Ping for later.
The Japanese have 3 sets of “characters”
The Kanji are borrowed from the Chinese and depending on how they are used either have an Un pronunciation or a Kun pronunciation. They express ideas similar to the Chinese with each character, but sometimes use them specifically for their phoenetic value to pronounce a Japanese word.
The Hirigana consists of about 46 kana (+2 not used anymore) indicate the 46 sounds in the language. There are only 46 phoenetic sounds nothing more nothing less. It was created for words that didn’t have a corresponding chinese character. Some are the same base kana with just an extra tick or circle to indicate a minor modification. So fu, bu, and pu are the same base with mods and have similar mouth shapes that progress. Or da vs ta as well. Often a combination of Kanji and Hirigana is used to create the japanese word as the kanji by itself won’t give the correct pronunciation.
The Katakana is similar to Hirigana but slightly modified and only used for foreign words - such as terebi which is japanese for television or a-to-mo-bi-ru. It isn’t combined with Kanji in usage.
Romaji is the last and is basically the alpahbet as we know it. Typically like with Katakana used for foreign words, teaching japanese to foreigners, advertising.
However - All you need to really be able to communicate in writing is one of the last three if you know the spoken vocabulary. It’ll come across crass or stilted, but if all you can do is write hirigana you can still write back and forth with someone. Katakana doesn’t work as well as Romanji in my view for doing the same, but it is possible.
Chinese on the other hand is a tonal language so on top of their hanzi character issue requiring thousands for true litracy you also have to be able to detect changes in pitch or tone that reflect a change in meaning for the words. So ma with a flat tone means mother (early mouth form for kids so common across languages), but ma with a down up tone means horse - not sure about you, but I never found it good to call my mom a horse’s ass. ;)
Mandarin has 4 tones, Cantonese has 5 and they can’t communicate between the two unless one either knows both or they know the hanzi to write with - because the characters retain their meaning independent of how they are pronounced.
It is cool how different the 3 languages are even though all these people are basically cousins.
Korean is easy to pronounce when you learn the alphabet, lol, you just need to know what the words mean.
Then of course the cultural differences and the sayings come in, after learning Korean you might be confused when the first person asks if your thirsty, cuz it translates into something like “Is your neck dry?”
lol
lol yeah in japanese ‘onaka suite’ means ‘(my) stomach is empty’ for I’m hungry. and your right given the geographic proximity you’d think they’d be closer - but then I look at Europe and go .... oh.... right.
lol.
true
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.