question on ports control tower

[bongodriver]

yes

[AndyJWest]

Please take care with the photocopier, Raaaid, Though a world with one Raaaid in it is a much better place than a world with no Raaaid, multiple copies of yourself might make things difficult for those of us with less inhibited neurons.

[raaaid]

thanks andy

actually i saw today a name of a ship which was japanese but was written in english

could english be the universlal language in ports?

[bongodriver]

Si

[Strike]

Raaaid, since we have "international waters" on our planet, I would assume it would be wise to label the ships with something understandable in English. And like Air Traffic Control, it's mostly done in English. I know smaller airstrips and areas where people know eachother you can speak native on the radiochannels.

So if a ship just reads XXXXXXX you wouldn't know what to think :p

[raaaid]

oh well thats better than geramn

[bongodriver]

Awww Strike that was boring.......no magic pixies or mystical narwhals

[JG5_emil]

I found this funny

[AndyJWest]

Hum, to return to the original question (or at least, what I think the question was), I suppose the Japanese could name a ship 'arigatō', which seems to mean more or less the same thing as obligado in Spanish(or obrigado in Portuguese) - though why anyone would want to call a ship 'Thank You' I wouldn't like to guess.

Or are you looking for words that mean something in Japanese, and something else in Spanish? You could call it 'San', which is 'three' in Japanese, 'Saint' (as a prefix) in Spanish, 'dream' in Serbo-Croat, 'journal' in Vietnamese, 'meat' in Kuna, etc, etc.

[Skoshi Tiger]

Originally Posted by raaaid

thanks andy
could english be the universlal language in ports?

It's a bit rough that the French get the universal language of love, and the British get the international language of shipping!

What were the French doing for all those years when Britania was ruling the waves?

Cheers!