came across this man's blog... interesting. I've got one comment --
נבלת עוף טהור מטמא בבית הבליעה
http://toshuo.com/2006/whats-the-airspeed-velocity-of-an-unladen-chinese-swallow/
What’s the Airspeed Velocity of an Unladen Chinese Swallow?September 1st, 2006 by Mark
Last night, while looking up some words I didn’t understand in a Chinese kids’ book, I found something really interesting, or at least really interesting if you’re a language geek. Unless there’s some reason to say something in a certain way, the Chinese way of saying it and the English way are often completely different. Here’s a case in which the similarity is so strong it seems like it couldn’t possibly be a coincidence.
In English, the word “swallow” can be a verb which means to gulp something down your throat. It can also be a noun which means a certain kind of bird.
The Chinese character 燕 means a swallow (the bird). Just by adding a mouth radical on the left side to make it 嚥[1], the meaning can be changed to swallow (i.e. gulp). In Mandarin at least, both words even have the same pronunciation - yàn.
Swallows swallow mosquitoes燕子嚥下蚊子
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