Merry Christmas!!!

            Since yesterday was Christmas, I've decided to do a holiday-themed post this week. Get pumped. Anyway, although Christmas is an international holiday celebrated by people around the world, the customs and traditions involving Christmas vary from culture to culture. One of these is how people greet one another on Christmas. In most English-speaking countries, we exclaim “Merry Christmas!” to strangers, family, and friends during the Christmas season. Other cultures speak different languages though, and therefore have different ways and meaning behind the words they use to greet people during Christmas.

• “Mele Kalikimaka”—Hawaiian,
• “Joyeux Noel”—French
• “Feliz Navidad”—Spanish
• “Buone Feste Natalizie”—Italian
• “Kala Christouyenna”—Greek
• “God Jul” and “Gledelig Jul”—Norwegian
• “Melkin Yelidet Beaal”—Ethiopian

All of these greetings are different ways to say “Merry Christmas”. Some can be translated literally to say something that isn't exactly “Merry Christmas”, but another festive greeting. For example, the Italian greeting for “merry Christmas” literally translates to “good festival/celebration Christmas”, “Have a good celebration of Christmas”. Languages differ around the world so it is important to be able to understand the language in order to understand the culture. While it is important to know other languages if you wish to communicate with other cultures, sometimes it doesn't matter what language you say a greeting like “Merry Christmas” in, it’s the warmth behind the words that allow you to understand the meaning of those words. 

My thoughts on Barnes and Noble, Originality, and Vampire Books, or the section formerly known as Young Adult

Have you ever been to Barnes and Noble? Of course you have. Only people who live under rocks or who don’t like fun, magical places haven’t. Anyway, for me, Barnes and Noble is one of the happiest places on Earth, after Disney and before candy stores. Walking into this glorious place, I can peruse rows and rows of books to my heart’s desire. When I go to Barnes and Noble, the section I spend the majority of my time in is the Teen/Young Adult Section. A few years ago, this used to be a great place to find new, unique stories that I would buy and treasure forever after reading them over and over again. Flash forward a few years, and some days, I barely recognize the place anymore. This is just my opinion, but I have to now work extremely hard to find a book that looks like a good story and I’m not going to guess the entire plot just by reading the book jacket. It seems that nearly all of the books geared towards my demographic are all about the same thing. If it’s realistic fiction, the story is going to be about some normal, girl-next-door type who goes on an adventure/experience/revelation with some boy that she probably would never expect to fall for. Lovely. The same story is probably in twelve of the books in the realistic fiction section. If the book is a fantasy book for my demographic (aka females between the ages of 15 and 18), it’s some tale about a girl who is the only one (of course) who can save her kingdom/planet/race from total annihilation and again, she falls for the conveniently hot guy helping her along the way.

 

And don’t even get me started on “Paranormal Romance”. Thanks to the popularity of Twilight, a million authors just decided to write a story containing a vampire, werewolf, or other type of paranormal romance in order to become world famous as well.  Am I being too harsh on these authors and their stories? Maybe. Probably. Who knows? The point is, I feel like there is no such thing as originality any more. It feels like every story being published nowadays is basically the same story, just with different characters, settings, and cover designs. Think about it. There are very few stories being published today that I feel are truly original AND interesting. Again, this is merely my opinion. But when I look at all of these books with pretty much the same plot line, it makes me sad. Is all the originality gone from the world? Are story tellers destined to tell the same stories until the end of time? Humans have always told stories concerning the same themes: love, death, self-discovery, friendship, and good verse evil to name a few. As humans, we simply find these themes most relevant, interesting, and mysterious so naturally we are going to tell stories to try to make sense of the feelings we have for these subjects. But to me, that doesn’t mean one cannot be creative!!! I think that many authors today fall back on what they think will get them readers, and they jump on the bandwagon. When Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight became a success, you started seeing a ton of other books about vampires and werewolves. Maybe this is the publisher’s fault. The publishing company saw Meyer’s success, and decided to dig up all of those young adult books that involved vampires out of the waiting pile and publish them, regardless of the quality of writing and story. So maybe these authors were being original, and publishing houses are just trying to make a few bucks. Creativity is the key to a GREAT story, and I feel that many authors today are missing the creative element. They have a dream to be published and so I feel that many borrow qualities from stories we’ve already heard to create their own story. There is nothing wrong with this, but if you borrow too much, you eventually steal, and you’ve written the same story you borrowed from.

So this is kind of a long rant, but my point is is that creativity is lacking in the world of novels. So to any aspiring authors out there, myself included, be creative! Stretch your brain and don’t take the easy way out! It’s hard to be creative and different from other stories. You will inevitably have similarities to other great stories because you’re human, but go the extra mile into writing a book that’s unique and doesn’t become cliché. Again, these are just my opinions, but let’s try to solve the creativity crisis in the world today. Be original. Don’t be afraid to do so. Until that day originality graces the shelves of B&N once again though, beware the clones that sit upon the shelves of the Young Adult section.

My thoughts about words and vocabulary (this sounds really boring but I promise, it's more interesting than it sounds)

            I’ve always been obsessed with words. I love how people can use words to tell a story, convey their thoughts, feelings, and ideas, and change the world. I especially love crazy words though that nobody has probably ever heard of before, but that sum up a feeling or idea perfectly. Plus, a lot of them are fun to say. Here are some examples of some of my favorite ‘crazy words’:

·         Gumusservi—noun, Turkish, moonlight shining on water

 

 

·         Galeanthropy—noun, the belief that you are a cat

·         Brumous—adjective, French, of grey skies and winter days; filled with heavy clouds or fog; relating to winter or cold, sunless weather

·         Nefelibata—noun, Portuguese, ‘cloud walker’; one who lives in the clouds of their own imagination or dreams, or one who does not obey the conventions of society, literature, or art

·         Toska—noun, Russian, a dull ache of the soul, a sick pining, a spiritual anguish

·         Orphic—adjective, mysterious and entrancing; beyond ordinary understanding

·         Nemophilist—noun, a haunter of the woods; one who loves the forest and its beauty and solitude

·         Psithurism—noun, Greek, the sound of wind through trees

·         Drapetomania—noun, an overwhelming urge to run away

I love how these words describe ideas or feelings that one often wishes to describe but it’s hard to find the words to do so. For example, I’ve read many stories where authors try to describe the sound of the wind blowing through the trees, but it could be more accurate and efficient to use the word “psithurism” instead. I think that if people try to expand their vocabulary then we could all be much better communicators.

      Another thought I’ve had about words lately is words from different languages. If you take a look at the list above, many of those weird words come from different languages: Turkish, French, Portuguese, Russian, Greek…there are so many different languages in the world and they all have different words that may not be found in other languages. Not only could people become better communicators by expanding their vocabulary, but they can become better communicators by learning other languages as well. If you aren’t limited to one language, you can find more ways to express yourself and your feelings. I found the perfect example of this once when I was on Facebook incidentally. There’s this Facebook page called Humans of New York, which is a photo-blog formed by a man named Brandon Stanton. Every day, Stanton roams the streets of New York City, and looks for people that interest him. When he finds one of these interesting people, he goes up to them and asks if he can take their photograph, and then captions the photograph with something the individual said during an interview-like conversation from the 5-minute photo shoot. I remember scrolling on Facebook one day and coming across a HONY post. The picture was of a man, and the caption basically said that he spoke both English and Spanish. The man said he spoke English to explain technical stuff, and Spanish to explain his feelings. He said Latinos have a lot of feelings. The point is, is that different cultures place importance on different values and ways of thinking. By learning different languages, you can express your feelings more efficiently because somebody has already coined the words to explain how you feel. Words are one of our greatest tools, and in my opinion, if we expand our vocabulary, we expand our tool belt and can accomplish so much more