In Italy, there’s a superstition around sitting at the corner of a table – it’s believed that sitting in this spot brings bad luck, especially for single people. The idea is rooted in historical social customs, where seating arrangements reflected one’s social status and prospects.
In the spirit of Halloween, here are some eerie words from around the world: 🎃
-Tengu (Japanese, pronounced ten-goo): In Japanese folklore, Tengu are mischievous mountain spirits with red faces and long noses, known for playing pranks on humans and guarding sacred spaces.
-Poltergeist (German, pronounced pole-ter-gahyst): known globally, this term refers to a noisy ghost that disturbs the living by moving objects or making sounds.
-Púca (Irish/Gaeilge, pronounced poo-ka): A shape-shifting spirit tied to ‘Samhain’ (Halloween’s Celtic origin), a “púca” appears as a black horse or mischievous goblin.
Colour is a powerful tool in communication, but its meaning can vary across cultures.
For example, while white represents purity and innocence in many Western cultures, it symbolises mourning and death in places like China and India. Green represents nature and growth in the West but can carry negative connotations of conflict or infidelity in Indonesia. Even brands like Euro Disney have faced challenges as their use of purple in Europe clashed with its association of death in Catholic countries.
Have you realised how naming traditions vary across the world?
For instance, in Japan, baby names are carefully chosen based on Kanji characters, which carry both symbolic and phonetic significance. Parents often consider the meaning in the characters to reflect qualities they hope their child will embody.
In our home country of Ireland, although English is the main everyday language, many people choose Irish names for their children, such as Saoirse, Oisín and Aoife, which connect to mythological stories and heritage.
Meanwhile in India, names are often chosen based on astrological charts, with Hindu parents consulting astrologers to see that the child’s name relates to their nakshatra (lunar constellation), to bring harmony and good fortune.
How was your name or your child’s name chosen? Feel free to share your story in the comments – I’d love to hear!
The Arabic influence on Spanish is significant, dating back to nearly 800 years of Arab rule in Spain. Roughly around 4,000 Spanish words come from Arabic, especially those starting with “al” such as alcalde (mayor), algodón (cotton), and almohada (pillow).
But our favourite of all these is probably “ojalá”, meaning “God willing”, which is a direct borrowing from a well known Arabic expression – who can guess which one?
Many ancient mythologies recount stories about the origins of language. One of the most well-known is the story of the Tower of Babel from Judeo-Christian tradition, which provides a mythological explanation for the multiplicity of languages in the world. It relates a story about how people originally all spoke one language. When they decided to build a tower so high it reached the sky, God punished them for their arrogance by scattering them about the earth and giving them many different languages so that they would never again be able to communicate and cooperate to such a sophisticated degree
Image Source: https://www.ancient-origins.net/myths…/tower-babel-001751
Only human beings speak languages per se, but of course other animals also use vocalisations and body language to communicate. Mammals and birds with greater cognitive abilities can use relatively complex systems to get their message across. Whales, dolphins, and porpoises, for example, use a wide variety of sounds, and researchers have discovered that there are dialectal differences between particular pods or extended family groups.
In the Ubang community in Nigeria, women and men speak different – but related – languages. Until the age of about ten, children spend time primarily with their mothers, and girls and boys alike speak the “women’s language,” but after that age, boys move into the world of men, and learn a different lexicon. Although this language system is threatened today, as members of the community increasingly speak more dominant Nigerian languages, it has persisted because Ubang women and men tend to live and work in different spheres, with a lot of communication taking place in same-sex environments.
Image Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-45262081
Today, people with severe hearing difficulties generally speak sign language, which enables them to communicate with other deaf people, and with anyone who knows how to sign. But because sign languages were developed autonomously in many separate places, there are actually over three hundred in use today. Some of these languages are closely related and at least somewhat mutually intelligible, but others are very different, so deaf people have the same issues with understanding people from diverse linguistic backgrounds as everybody else.
The Shavian Alphabet, also known as the Shaw alphabet, was funded by Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw and largely designed by Ronald Kingsley Read. Shaw was interested in replacing the standard English alphabet with an alternative that would remove all the ambiguities from English pronunciation. The new alphabet was based on phonemes and all the letters were distinct from the Roman alphabet. It consists of tall, deep, and short letters, each with a shape that can be written in a single movement. Aside from a small community of enthusiasts, the Shavian alphabet never really caught on, and English speakers continue to deal with remarkably inconsistent spelling norms.