Chinese, and the second might be 'west' which is written 西 in Chinese. The character for 'west' appears in the word 'thing' but these two words are totally unrelated in English.

Zhang found that, when two words shared characters in Chinese, participants processed the second word faster  even though they had no conscious knowledge of having seen the first word in the pair. Even though these students are fluent in English, their brains still automatically translate what they see into Chinese. This suggests that knowledge of a first language automatically influences the processing of a second language, even when they are very different, unrelated languages.

Dr Walter van Heuven added "This research shows that reading words in a second language is influenced by the native language through automatic andI was at a Parent Meeting at my daughter's high school recently, and the instructor for the AP US History course was explaining his course, that it covered the time period between Columbus' discovery and 9/11. A parent asked him why he didn't cover up to the present day, and he explained that, in the academic community, usually a couple of decades have to pass for history to "settle." What he meant is that the "facts" sometimes aren't known or apparent until many years later.

Thinking about 9/11, I was reminded of the impact that event had on our industry. The economic impact now seems like it was a rehearsal for the current recession. The day of the attack, our local major metropolitan airport called the company I was