NavList:

Dear Frank,

:)

I was asking for the clues one uses to memorise, similar to the thin as a pin, thick as a brick a student of English could rely upon to distinguish the word "thick" vs very similar-looking word "thin".

I saw several star-finding charts - drawing lines through the constellations, yes, it is helpful to FIND a star - provided YOU ALREADY KNOW its' name and HOW to find it on a chart.

I'm talking about a different thing - the way to help a non-arabic-speaker to memorise mostly meaningless words and their correspondence with stars.

Besides, the "bear" in Russian is not the "honey eater", literally it is "someone who knows about the honey". :)

And while we are at it - the "honey-knower" was used instead of the true name of the beast - which was literally a "bär" in ancient Slavic language (we know it because the bear's lair still sounds very similar to the " bär 's lodge" - "берлога" in modern Russian). They said the "honey-knower" to avoid using the bear's "real" name - to prevent him coming. This name substitution was made so long ago that now we use the second order "line of defence" - instead of the "honey-knower" we name them the "crook-legged". Hoping they will not guess. :)

Warm regards,

Tony