Lost in translation
1. My ex-boyfriend was Swiss and couldn't remember the word for calf - he called it a "puppy cow." Still one of the cutest things I've heard.
2. My girlfriend is Dutch, and when she couldn't remember the word 'slug' she called it "a snail without a house".
3.
A friend of mine (whose first language IS English) forgot the word for night once and referred to it as the dark time.
4. I taught English in Korea and one of my favourite comments from an adult learner was "I like that Hemingway! What's the book again? Bye Bye Guns?" (A Farewell to Arms)
5. I know someone from Brazil who kept calling rings "finger necklace", and we once went to the grocery store to get light bulbs. She asked an employee where they were located, and couldn't think of the word so she described it as "sunshine for your home".
6. Genre of dog -- I forgot the word for breed.
7. Caucasian broccoli for cauliflower.
Cancer screening
For a long time, scientists have dreamed of developing the ultimate cancer-screening test, one that can detect malignancy early, a phase before tumour cells are able to spread and treatments are more effective. A new study suggests we are a step closer … "By using a blood test scientists were able to diagnose cancer long before symptoms appeared in nearly all the people it tested who went on to develop cancer. What we showed is: up to four years before these people walk into the hospital, there are already signatures in their blood that show they have cancer," says Kun Zhang, a bioengineer at the University of California, San Diego, and a co-author of the study. "That's never been done before." This method is said to be an "essential first step" in creating a cancer-screening product.
Mixed messaging
