Backwards words

The sports stars interviewed here by Pennsylvania’s Patriot-News confirm what every Dutch child knows already: watch television in your target tongue and you can skip those expensive and boring language classes. Different alphabets are another kettle of fish, however:

“I was reading a book that Artukhin had on the bus,” Richardson said. “It was Russian. It’s like backwards letters. We can’t really tell what it says.”

Quite a lot of multinational sports coaching seems to occur using either rapidly concocted pidgins or gesture - interesting article - which makes me wonder why I can’t find any studies of sports signing. Re the former, I really would like to believe the following:

There is a connection between an athletic coach and a railroad coach! And it comes from Hungary. In Kocs, Hungary, not far from present-day Budapest, the first coaches or carriages were used to convey passengers. First called kotczi, the name spread and was Anglicized to “coach.” During the 1840s, coach was applied to University tutors in England since the coaches “carried” their charges along. (SaukValley.com)

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