Quote of the week: 3 Jan 2015
“Be at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and let every new year find you a better man.” Benjamin Franklin
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New Year traditions around the world
Happy New Year! Whether you’re already there, or have a few more hours to wait, we hope that 2015 will be a fantastic year and bring you everything you hope for.
As the celebrations get underway, here are a few interesting New Year traditions from around the world…
Twelve grapes
In Spain, eat a grape for each strike of the clock at midnight; if you manage to eat all twelve during the chimes, you’ll have twelve months of good luck.
First-footing
This is the tradition of being first into a house after midnight, in Scotland and Northern England. The first-foot should bring gifts of a coin, bread, salt, coal, or whisky, which represent financial prosperity, food, flavour, warmth and good cheer. The best kind of first-foot is believed to be a tall, dark-haired man.
Kissing
A tradition from German and English folklore says that you must kiss someone at midnight, and that that person will be significant in your future. If you don’t kiss anyone, it means you’re doomed to a year of loneliness. Apparently.
Yellow underwear
In Chile, if you want good luck and prosperity in the new year, wear yellow underwear – inside out – and then turn it the right way after midnight.
Making a lot of noise
In the Phillippines, the New Year’s custom is to make a lot of noise at midnight, to frighten away evil spirits. People buy small horns called torotots and also use paputok (firecrackers) as well as banging pots and pans and revving their vehicle engines.
Burning ‘Mr Old Year’
In Colombia, the previous year is seen out by families as they build large stuffed male dolls filled with different materials, and items that they no longer want or that have sad memories attached to them. Then they burn the doll at midnight, which represents burning the past and looking to the future.
Lentils
The first thing you should eat after midnight in Hungary is lentil soup, because it’s believed that lentils will bring you riches in the new year – and the more lentils you eat, the richer you’ll be.
New Year Dip
In various towns on the Welsh coast, brave swimmers take a dip in the freezing sea on New Year’s Day. Some people do it in fancy dress – and no, we don’t know why.
How will you be celebrating the New Year? Whatever you’re doing we hope you have a great time!
The uTalk language challenge 2015
We’ve had a great response to the uTalk challenge, with people all over the world getting on board and committing to learning a new language for the new year. There’s still time to join in – we’ll be starting on January 1st, but even after that there’s no reason you can’t take part if you’d like to. It’s never a bad time to learn a language, so just drop us an email and let us know your name and chosen language (there are 100 to choose from) if you’d like to join in.
Here are a few more details on how it’s going to work:
1. First things first
The challenge is intended to be fun. As competitive as we may get between ourselves here in the office (and we will!), we don’t want to put any pressure on anyone. So if you do find the language is a bit more challenging than you expected, or you don’t have as much time as you thought you would, nothing bad will happen. We promise.
Secondly, more than anything this is a personal challenge. We do ask that everyone starts together on January 1st 2015, and we’ll be keeping you posted on how others are doing, but we’ll let you decide how you go about learning. You can tackle the topics and games in any order you like; there’s no set order. Maybe you could get some friends to join you and have your own private contest – or you may find that your main competition ends up being yourself!
A few people have asked why the challenge is only for iOS users. It’s nothing personal – it’s just because at the moment, the uTalk app is only available for iOS devices. We’re really sorry that we can’t offer this opportunity to everyone right now.
2. What you’ll learn
The code we’ve sent to participants unlocks the Essentials upgrade, which contains eleven categories to learn. (If you haven’t yet received your Essentials code, please email us and let us know which language you’re waiting for.) There is a further upgrade – the Premium upgrade – but this isn’t part of the challenge, so you’re under no obligation to purchase it. However, should you wish to learn more later, as uTalk challenge participants, this upgrade will only cost you £4.99 instead of the usual £12.99, which we hope you’ll agree is a bit of a bargain.
(On a side note, the EuroTalk team are taking on the full Premium app for our challenge, so don’t be alarmed if our scores look a bit higher than everyone else’s…)
3. Keeping in touch
We’ll be keeping in touch with everyone by email at regular intervals throughout the month to let you know how we’re doing and check on your progress. If at any point you don’t want us to do this, because you’ve had to put the challenge aside for the time being, or you’d just rather be left alone to get on with it by yourself, let us know and we’ll take you off the list.
When we contact you, we’ll ask you to email us a screenshot showing your current score (this will appear at the bottom of the topic menu once you start collecting points). This is so we can verify the scores, but also because it’s the quickest and easiest way for you to send them to us. If you’re not sure how to do this, we’ll be happy to explain! We’ll also be posting updates on our own social media on how you’re all doing in different languages, but we promise not to use anyone’s name without prior permission.
4. Sharing your progress
But don’t feel you can only share your progress with us when we email you. We’d love to hear from you at any time, so you’re always welcome to tweet us (@EuroTalk), email us or write on our Facebook page to let us know how you’re getting on. We’re also on Instagram so if you’re sharing any photos from the challenge, please tag us: @uTalk_learnalanguage
We’re not the only ones who’ll want to know how you’re doing. From personal experience, we know that sharing your goal with friends and family is a great way to keep your motivation up when it starts to flag (which it probably will at some point – you’re only human, after all). You may even inspire them to join in too.
If you are talking about the uTalk challenge on social media, please use hashtag #NewYearNewuTalk to join the conversation.
5. Finally…
This is the first time we’ve done the uTalk challenge, so please bear with us if it doesn’t always go entirely smoothly! If it goes well, we’d like to make it an annual event, so if you have any suggestions at any point on how we could make it better in the future, we’d love to hear them. (We have lots of ideas already…)
Good luck, and if you have any questions now or during January, we’ll be happy to answer them.
Happy New Year – and Happy Learning!
Why I’m learning French in January
So you’ve heard about our January challenge. You haven’t?! Quick, you still have time, have a look here.
So I thought I’d give you my reasons for learning French, you know, in case you need some inspiration. The main reason is because I’ll be going to Paris for New Year (woop woop) and I am basically getting into ‘French mode’ by listening to French songs, eating croissants, and I even bought a chic beret.
As a kid, teenager and young adult I have been learning German and English, and although I think they are both brilliant languages, I have always felt that I want to have that nice, delicate French accent and sing along with Edith Piaf while putting on my winged eyeliner.
I’m expecting it to be quite similar to my native language, Romanian for numerous reasons among which are the facts that they are both romance languages and that for quite a long period of history, Romania looked up to the French politics, lifestyle and architecture so many words come from French language – really excited about it!
Come play with us, it’ll be fun! Choose a language and let us know!
Ioana
Why I’m learning Italian in January
So I’ve jumped on the bandwagon and I’m taking part in the New Year uTalk challenge too.
It took me a while to finally decide on Italian. I was going to attempt Arabic or Mandarin; however given the time frame of just one month, I thought the challenge would be too great for myself. However I will attempt either Arabic or Mandarin at some point next year, you can hold me to that!
So why Italian I hear you say? Well there are many reasons.
I often go skiing in Italy and it’s very different to skiing anywhere else in Europe, as not many people speak English. It can be quite a struggle sometimes, so hopefully by the end of January with my newfound Italian it should be a breeze.
Near the office there is an Italian delicatessen, which sells some seriously good food. When you enter they’re always talking to you in Italian, and as I speak none I feel slightly embarrassed that I can’t respond in their own language. My goal by the end of January is to be able to order my food in Italian, as well as have a conversation with the employees there.
My final reason is that there are many beautiful cities that I wish to visit over the next few years in Italy. Even though it is a given that I will do the ‘touristy’ things whilst I’m there, I would also like to think I may be able to go off the beaten track and find some true wonders hidden from the tourists. I also don’t want to be a typical tourist and ignore the locals; I want to be able to interact with them and get a real feel for the city.
So those are my reasons for learning Italian.
Anyone else going to join me?
Amy
