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Peter KalmAt the Niagara Falls: When you are at the Fall and look up the river you may see that the river above the Fall is everywhere exceeding steep, almost as the side of a hill. When all this water comes to the very Fall, there it throws itself down perpendicular! It is beyond all belief the surprise when ... Read the full entry here.
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| Get ahead in life (1 post), Thu Sep 02, 2010 11:38 am
The BBC's use of quota... (17 posts), Thu Sep 02, 2010 12:26 am
a loose man (not a woman) (8 posts), Thu Sep 02, 2010 12:04 am
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Marine Biology (1 post), Wed Sep 01, 2010 8:05 am
Nationality idioms? (26 posts), Tue Aug 31, 2010 1:29 pm
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beat me to it (4 posts), Sat Aug 28, 2010 6:18 pm
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a good old joke (1 post), Tue Aug 24, 2010 7:32 pm
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bloody nora (20 posts), Tue Aug 24, 2010 12:41 am
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| India-China joint venture lost in translationThe [Indian] air force's plans to hold its first-ever joint exercises with the Chinese air force have hit turbulence. The hiccup: language barriers. Plans may be afoot to conduct joint exercises with China's People's Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) in 2012, but top air force officers fear not knowing each
other's language could be fatal in the skies.
A senior air force officer said, "Finding a way around language barriers is crucial if we have to conduct joint air maneouvres with China. It is a huge hurdle."
...
Here's how dangerous miscommunication can be: In 1993, Chinese pilots flying a US-made MD-80 were attempting to land in heavy fog at Urumqi in northwest China.
They were flummoxed by an audio alarm from the plane's ground proximity warning system.
Just before impact, the cockpit voice recorder picked up one crewmember asking another in Chinese: "What does 'pull up' mean?" Read more here. Date: 16 Aug 2010
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