I've been dealing with the Engligh language - and, particularly, the American way of speaking -, for quite some time now, as a translator and teacher, but, these days, I came accross some words that have different meanings according to the country you're in. So here are some examples:

Cheers

• In the US: an expression used in celebration, usually when clinking glasses together

• In the UK: an expression of gratitude

Alright 

• In the US: an inquisitive gesture
  

• In the UK: a greeting

Cheeky

• In the US: disrespectful in speech or behavior

•  In the UK: behaving in a bold or rude manner, but in a funny way

Tutor

• In the US: someone who helps you with your homework

• In the UK: a formal instructor

Jumper

• In the US: Someone standing on the edge of a building prepared to jump

• In the UK: Sweater

~Ally

     As you might easily guess, a lunar calendar is based on cycles of the lunar phases. Because there are slightly more than twelve lunations or synodic months (months with approximately 29 days) in a solar year, the period of 12 lunar months (354.37 days) is sometimes referred to as a lunar year.
     A common purely lunar calendar, for example, is the Islamic calendar or Hijri Qamari calendar. A feature of the Islamic calendar is that a year is always 12 months, so the months are not linked with the seasons and drift each solar year by 11 to 12 days. It comes back to the position it had in relation to the solar year approximately every 33 Islamic years. It is used mainly for religious purposes, but in Saudi Arabia it is the official calendar. Other lunar calendars often include extra months added occasionally to synchronize it with the solar calendar. The oldest known lunar calendar was found in Scotland; it dates back to around 10000 BP.
     Curiously, though, most calendars referred to as "lunar" calendars are in fact lunisolar calendars. That is, months reflect the lunar cycle, but then intercalary months are added to bring the calendar year into synchronisation with the solar year. Some examples are the Chinese and Hindu calendars. Some other calendar systems used in antiquity were also lunisolar. All these calendars have a variable number of months in a year. The reason for this is that a solar year is not equal in length to an exact number of lunations, so without the addition of intercalary months the seasons would drift each year. To synchronise the year, a thirteen-month year is needed every two or three years.
     Some lunar calendars are calibrated by annual natural events which are affected by lunar cycles as well as the solar cycle. An example of this is the lunar calendar of the Banks Islands, which includes three months in which the edible palolo worm mass on the beaches. These events occur at the last quarter of the lunar month, as the reproductive cycle of the palolos is synchronised with the moon.
     Even though the Gregorian calendar is in common and legal use, lunar and lunisolar calendars serve to determine traditional holidays in many parts of the world, including India, China, Korea, Japan, Vietnam and Nepal. Such holidays include Ramadan, Diwali, Chinese New Year, Tết (Vietnamese New Year), Mid-Autumn Festival/Chuseok and Nepal Sambat and Mongolian New Year as called Tsagaan sar, to name a few.

~Ally

     Some friends invited me the other day to take a test to see how many days would I last in a zombie-filled world. The result was quite disappointing for me, since, according to them, I would only live for 65 days after the zombie apocalypse began. So I decided to search for new weapons to improve my knowledge on zombie killing, and stumbled upon a gunblade.
     Gunblades or pistol swords are exactly what you're thinking they are: a combination os a sword and a gun. And before you think "hey, a rifle with bayonete is the same thing", well, it isn't. It differs from a rifle with a bayonet because the gunblade is designed primarily for use as a sword, and the firearm component is typically considered a secondary weapon, an addition to the blade, rather than the sword being a secondary addition to the pistol. Oh, and it's important to say that the two components of these weapons typically cannot be separated, unlike most bayonet-fixed rifles, for example.
    When I first saw it, I thought it was from a steampunk movie or something, but turns out they're real! According to historians, some flintlock pistols of the 17th and 18th centuries were constructed as gun-swords, with the barrel of the pistol attached to the side of the blade of a shortsword or dagger. A shell guard protected the firing mechanism when it was used as a sword. These were commonly used by French and German hunters to kill wounded wild boar. It also appeared in other countries such as India, where they were called Katar, a thrusting dagger with two built-in pistols that could be fired by squeezing the bars of the handgrip together.
     Sadly, though, pistol swords were not widely used and became uncommon relatively quickly, due to their expense and because instead of getting two weapons in one, one got a heavy pistol and a heavy, off-balance sword. So much for my awesome zombie killing weapon.

~Ally

     I remember hearing about Boudica and her rebellion some years ago but, apart from knowing she led her people in battles against the Romans, I didn't know very much about her. So I dug a little and the result is the following.
    Boudicca was queen of the Iceni people of Eastern England and married to Prasutagus, ruler of the Iceni people of East Anglia. When the Romans conquered southern England in AD 43, they allowed Prasutagus to continue to rule. However, when Prasutagus died the Romans decided to rule the Iceni directly and confiscated the property of the leading tribesmen. They are also said to have stripped and flogged Boudicca and raped her daughters. These actions exacerbated widespread resentment at Roman rule and, in 60 or 61 AD, while the Roman governor Gaius Suetonius Paullinus was leading a campaign in North Wales, the Iceni rebelled. Members of other tribes joined them.
     Boudicca's warriors successfully defeated the Roman Ninth Legion and destroyed the capital of Roman Britain, then at Colchester. They went on to destroy London and Verulamium (St Albans). Thousands were killed. Finally, Boudicca was defeated by a Roman army led by Paulinus. Many Britons were killed and Boudicca is thought to have poisoned herself to avoid capture. The site of the battle, and of Boudicca's death, are unknown.

~Ally

     Do you know your life's purpose? Well, I still haven't quite figured out mine, but with 5 minutes and the help of this TEDx talk by Adam Leipzig, maybe you and I will discover it. Tell me later what is yours in the comments section!

~Ally

     (SCREAMING INTERNALLY A-OOO! A-OOO!!!)
     I can't believe I've been posting and running this blog for 300 days. Some days it seems like it's been forever since I started it, and some days it feels like it was just yesterday. Anyway, today I want to show you a poem that has kept me going - as it did with the incredible Nelson Mandela - and giving me strengh and energy to accomplish all my duties.
     It is a short Victorian poem by the English poet William Ernest Henley (1849–1903). It was written in 1875 and published in 1888 in his first volume of poems, Book of Verses, where it is the fourth poem in the section Life and Death (Echoes). It originally had no title.
     I hope it inspires you too. And many thanks to my friend Leo who showed me this marvelous poem!

 Invictus
by William Ernest Henley

"Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul."

~Ally

     Today's post is another TEDx talk, but this time with some tips for us polyglot-wannabes. If they work or not? Well, that's something each one of us will have to see for themselves.

~Ally

     I don't know about you, but every now and then I need a little boost in my self confidence. So today's inspirational post is Dr.Ivan Joseph's TEDx talk about this subject. Enjoy!

~Ally

     Remember what I told you about the Gregorian Calendar yesterday? Well, I purposely forgot to mention that the alterations were made in the Julian Calendar, which was stablished as a reform of the Roman Calendar by none other than Julius Caesar in 46 BC. It was the predominant calendar in most of Europe, and in European settlements in the Americas and elsewhere, until it was refined and superseded by the Gregorian calendar. The difference in the length of the year between Julian (365.25 days) and Gregorian (365.2425 days) is 0.002%, that is - if you're not so good at math like me -, 13 days. In short: the Julian Calendar is 13 days behind the Gregorian Calendar. Savvy?
     Let's explain it a little bit more: the Julian calendar has a regular year of 365 days divided into 12 months, as listed in Table of months. A leap day is added to February every four years. The Julian year is, therefore, on average 365.25 days long. It was intended to approximate the tropical (solar) year. Although Greek astronomers had known, at least since Hipparchus, a century before the Julian reform, that the tropical year was a few minutes shorter than 365.25 days, the calendar did not compensate for this difference. As a result, the calendar year gained about three days every four centuries compared to observed equinox times and the seasons. This discrepancy was corrected by the Gregorian reform of 1582. The Gregorian calendar has the same months and month lengths as the Julian calendar, but inserts leap days according to a different rule.
     The Julian calendar has been replaced as the civil calendar by the Gregorian calendar in almost all countries which formerly used it, although it continued to be the civil calendar of some countries into the 20th century. Most Christian denominations in the West and areas evangelized by Western churches have also replaced the Julian calendar with the Gregorian as the basis for their liturgical calendars. However, most branches of the Eastern Orthodox Church still use the Julian calendar for calculating the dates of moveable feasts, including Easter (Pascha). Some Orthodox churches have adopted the Revised Julian calendar for the observance of fixed feasts, while other Orthodox churches retain the Julian calendar for all purposes. Believe it or not, the Julian calendar is still used by the Berber people of North Africa and on Mount Athos.

~Ally

     For some unknown reason, I always believed that the Gregorian calendar was something I'd never seen in my life. So you can imagine how surprised I was to find out that this is not only the civil calendar, but also has been the unofficial global standard for decades and is recognized by several international institutions.
     It is also called the Western calendar and the Christian calendar and it was a refinement made in 1582 to the Julian calendar amounting to a 0.002% correction in the length of the year. The motivation for the reform was to bring the date for the celebration of Easter to the time of the year in which the First Council of Nicaea had agreed upon in 325. Because the celebration of Easter was tied to the spring equinox, the Roman Catholic Church considered this steady drift in the date of Easter undesirable. The reform was adopted initially by the Catholic countries of Europe. Protestants and Eastern Orthodox countries continued to use the traditional Julian calendar and adopted the Gregorian reform after a time, for the sake of convenience in international trade. The last European country to adopt the reform was Greece, in 1923.
     The Gregorian reform contained two parts: a reform of the Julian calendar as used prior to Pope Gregory XIII's time and a reform of the lunar cycle used by the Church, with the Julian calendar, to calculate the date of Easter. The reform was a modification of a proposal made by Aloysius Lilius. His proposal included reducing the number of leap years in four centuries from 100 to 97, by making 3 out of 4 centurial years common instead of leap years. Lilius also produced an original and practical scheme for adjusting the epacts of the moon when calculating the annual date of Easter, solving a long-standing obstacle to calendar reform.
    In addition to the change in the mean length of the calendar year from 365.25 days (365 days 6 hours) to 365.2425 days (365 days 5 hours 49 minutes 12 seconds), a reduction of 10 minutes 48 seconds per year, the Gregorian calendar reform also dealt with the accumulated difference between these lengths. Between AD 325 (when the First Council of Nicaea was held, and the vernal equinox occurred approximately 21 March), and the time of Pope Gregory's bull in 1582, the vernal equinox had moved backward in the calendar, so that in 1582 it occurred about 11 March, 10 days earlier than 21 March. The Gregorian calendar therefore began by skipping 10 calendar days, to restore 21 March as the date of the vernal equinox.
     Though not part of the Gregorian calendar itself, the reformed calendar continued the previous year-numbering system (Anno Domini), which counts years from the traditional date of the Nativity, originally calculated in the 6th century and in use in much of Europe by the High Middle Ages. This year-numbering system, now also called the Common Era, is the predominant international standard today.

~Ally