New words are our new friends

When I’m learning a new language, I’m always on the lookout for effective ways to deal with grammar and vocabulary.

Grammar rules tend to stick to my mind rather easily, even though they tend to… disappear right when I need them! But vocabulary is a different story. Learning vocabulary in a new language takes both time and patience. What’s more, if we don’t see new words often, they constantly slip our minds. 

Maybe this happens because new words are like new friends. We have to meet them often in order to be their friends.

I find it impossible to take a list of new words and learn them by heart. Even if some of them stick, I am going to forget them later on.

Just like people I met once. They are not my friends.

But if I meet them one day at the grocery store, the next day at the supermarket, or at a friend’s house… First they are acquaintances. Yet slowly, these people become my friends.

That’s exactly what we need to do with vocabulary.

Not only should we meet new words again and again but also we should meet them in various environments or contexts.

This way they will stick to our minds much easier.

 And how are we going to do that?

By increasing the possibility of meeting new words again and again. That’s what I have done when I learned English:

I listened to songs and looked up the lyrics.

I saw movies without subs.

I read a great amount of novels and non-fiction.

I noticed everything written in English.

I looked up stuff that interested me such as recipes, gardening tips etc.

I looked up every single word in the dictionary.

All the above involve spending amounts of time just hanging out with the new language. And without stressing, just hanging out, it was much easier to learn.

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Quotes about writing

I found some very nice quotes that can give us inspiration to write, especially in the days it gets very difficult. I would like to share with you the ones I think are true for me:

“There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.” 

― Maya Angelou

It is important to be who you want to be, in this case a writer. It is pointless to try to become anything else.

“A bird doesn't sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song.” 

― Maya Angelou

Sometimes there’s no need to hear the answers. You need only to feel that people share with you the same questions.

“If you don't have time to read, you don't have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that.” 

― Stephen King

All writers had a passion for reading. 

“One day I will find the right words, and they will be simple.” 

― Jack Kerouac

No universal truths were verbose.

“Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.” 

― Anton Chekhov

Don’t be analytical in your writing; you have to show, not to tell!

“How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.” 

― Henry David Thoreau

But many people have been inside their homes all their lives, yet have written great novels. It depends. Nevertheless, I like this quote.

“The road to hell is paved with adverbs.” 

― Stephen King, On Writing

Again, don’t be verbose in your writing. 

“If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot.” 

― Stephen King

“Always be a poet, even in prose.” 

― Charles Baudelaire

In this case, writing will never be boring.

“One always has a better book in one's mind than one can manage to get onto paper.” 

― Michael Cunningham

“You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.” 

― Jack London

“The role of a writer is not to say what we can all say, but what we are unable to say.” 

― Anaïs Nin

Many times when reading a novel I have realised that the writer has shaped many of my thoughts into words.

“Description begins in the writer’s imagination, but should finish in the reader’s.” 

― Stephen King, On Writing

In other words, don’t over-analyse. Readers want you to be subtle, and to let them finish the job.

“Easy reading is damn hard writing.” 

― Nathaniel Hawthorne

Thanks for reading.

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Even maps tell lies

Nothing is certain in this life.

For example, we go to school and learn geography, without realising that what we see in world maps may not be always the truth.

And how could it be true, since it is not possible to represent the earth, which is roughly a sphere, onto a flat piece of paper without error.

Okay, we certainly expect some error, but what kind of error?

Is it possible that school world maps could represent the earth so inaccurately, showing country A as bigger than country B, when in fact country B is actually bigger than country A?

But that’s precisely what happens!

One of the most common map projections, the Mercator projection, distorts the countries’ surfaces according to their distance from the equator. This leads to Greenland being shown as bigger than Africa, when in fact Africa is much much bigger. 

These problems can be solved by using a different kind of map projection, which is called the equal-area projection. The Gall-Peters projection is a good example of this.

Nevertheless, if you come across a map made like this, you will find it both awkward and disorientating.

Maybe it is better sometimes to look at the numbers, which never lie – almost:

Greenland: Total Area: 2,166,086 km²

Africa: Total Area: 30,221,532 km²

References

Wikipedia contributors. "Gall–Peters projection." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 27 Sep. 2012. Web. 3 Oct. 2012. 

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Look up the words you know

When translating a text, the unknown words are not something we should fear.

It is the known words that we should fear.

'Known' are the words we have been exposed to, the words that we have looked up in the dictionary at some point, the words that we think we know what they mean.

So, why should we pay particular attention to them? 

Because we think we know what they mean.

We are not sure.

Moreover, we may be familiar with one particular sense of the word. Yet, in the text we are translating, the word may appear in a different sense. Or the word may be a false friend with a word in our language; if we use it the wrong way, we make a terrible mistake.

Take the word 'sycophantically'. It derives from a Greek word, so you may think “okay, this is a known word, let’s by-pass the dictionary and use the Greek word in question". Stop! You’re making a terrible mistake! 'Sycophantically' in English has a totally different meaning. In fact, it means 'flatteringly' whereas the corresponding Greek word means 'slanderous'. That’s one of the reasons us translators should be paying extreme attention to what we are doing, since it is not always clear from the context that we are making a mistake. Be careful!

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Czech… and the city

According to Paul Knox (1995), the city offers an immense variety of opportunities. Look how he quotes Fischer citing ‘the reaction of a ‘refugee’ New Yorker living in Vermont: 

I kept hearing this tempting ad for a Czechoslovakian restaurant… When the ad went on to say that this particular place had been chosen by the critic of the Times out of all the Czech restaurants in New York as the very best, I could have broken down and cried. We hardly get a choice of doughnut stands in Vermont; New Yorkers idly pick and choose among Czech restaurants.

This is how I want to live. To be able to pick and choose among all the interesting things the city has to offer. 

By the way, there are 2 Czech restaurants in Athens (I have been in both), 16 French, 15 Indian, 4 Spanish, 159 Italian, 41 Chinese, 5 African, and 25 Japanese-Sushi restaurants (according to ask4food.gr).

Life in the cities is quite stimulating, isn’t it?

References

Knox, Paul. Urban Social Geography. An Introduction. Third Edition. 1995. Essex: Longman. 158-159.

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The easy way of writing

I have been dreaming about becoming a writer since I was a child, and I used to write stories very often.

Yet I had a very sadistic view about writing: that writing should flow naturally out of you. That you shouldn’t fret about it, or else you were not a ‘true’ writer. If you put any effort whatsoever, you didn’t have much talent as a writer. These were my views back then.

Anything that would make my writing life easier, I regarded as ‘cheating’.

Now I embrace anything that can help me write more and better.

One book that has helped me a lot is What If? Writing Exercises for Fiction Writers by Anne Bernays and Pamela Painter. The following writing sketches are inspired from this excellent book and its instructions.

The book advises to practise writing opening lines for imaginary novels just to get the knack of it.

The following pairs are based on opposite ideas to make it easier. And it is easier because now I am writing with a solid, concrete purpose:

PAIRS OF SENTENCES TO BEGIN A NOVEL

BIRTH

A new baby exactly at the beginning of the day, cracking alive together with the crack of dawn, can bring nothing but optimism to our black, shabby world. 

DEATH

A low moaning, together with the cry of a bird, and the shadow of a blackbird, marked his last moments of mortal sorrow. 

MOTHER

She cast her eyes down the small body, and found herself. 

DAUGHTER

A twig made a chirping sound –or was it a bird?– as Karen moved towards her mother’s table at St Tropez. 

RICH

Donna’s idea of breakfast consisted beaches, sea, and at least five of her friends. 

POOR

He looked down at his navel, and back in the mirror, he touched briefly his eyebrows, his mouth, his chest, and only then did he realise he was completely, absolutely, terribly hungry.

Do you think that these opening lines would make interesting novels?

What could be happening in terms of plot?

What about the characters these openings evoke?

Would you like to write your own opening lines? It is so easy!

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The city now and then

Whenever I go to the country I feel I somehow miss the city. The city has so much to offer. It is a pity that we all seem to hate the city. 

The night before I left for the country I was looking at a very interesting book, Paul Knox’s Urban Social Geography, reading about the attitudes of people towards the city.

People generally believe that they would live better in the country than in the city. Nevertheless, there was something that brought them to the city in the first place.

Do people really ignore the opportunities that exist in cities? Knox mentions Baudelaire, pointing out that the diversity people experience in the city can lead to change in a cultural way. Remember how important the cities have been throughout history when it comes to cultural change: it is precisely because cities embrace difference; it’s in the cities that we have the chance to meet new people every day.

How important cultural change is, and yet we forget. Nothing can easily begin in the country. Everything begins in the cities. Everything began in the ancient ones. 

I visited Ancient Messene during my holidays. This is a highly preserved site of the ancient city, with a complete stadium, various temples, and a theatre. Crammed up, this little ‘city centre’ evoked the lost era very clearly, and at the same time it was relatively easy for me to picture exactly how life could have been there.

It was the epitome of city ruins, to me. Not segmented like ancient Athens. It is all there for us to see…

References 

Knox, Paul. Urban Social Geography. An Introduction. Third Edition. 1995. Essex: Longman.

Thanks very much for reading.

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Everything is fiction

At  some point in my life, someone told me that everything in life is sales. I do not agree.

Everything is fiction.

Everything is fiction because our lives are much affected by fiction. Or better, because the way we perceive our lives has everything to do with fiction.

I mean, the stories we heard in childhood have created templates in our minds. And when we miss some of the facts in a situation, these templates help us fill these gaps. For instance, this happens when we look upon a situation and we try to impose a plot on it. And why is that?

Because we have got used to look at situations the way we look at stories.

But most of the times we forget that there may not be any underlying plot, and so we read more into the situation than there really is. This can lead to terrible misunderstandings and confusion.

A case in point: imagine a very beautiful girl, and her stepmother. The stepmother does not like the girl. What is happening in your mind when I tell you this story? Do you imagine a wicked stepmother that tries to emulate, belittle, and even kill the girl? If I mention to you that a horrible accident has happened, which thoughts come first to your mind? That the girl is the villain, or the other way round?

Now try to remember moments in your life when your thoughts were shaped by means of the stories you know. Did you read more into the situation than there really was? Did you use knowledge from stories in order to fill the gaps?

Stories are stories. Nothing more. Sometimes they help us understand things, sometimes they don’t. Some stories were created a long time ago, but now things have changed. Women do not wait for the Prince Charming. Or does society expect them to do so?

Do you follow any stories without realising it? Do they shape your mind for you?

Why not choose which stories we’ve got to keep, and which stories we should give up?

And then create new stories. Stories in which we are winners, we are creative, we are the best we can be.

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