THIS IS NOT VALERIA'S POST, BUT FRANCISCA'S

Wait… What they’re talking about!

Hi! With my team have worked and figured out about the Unites States culture, so now I want to share with you a very interesting (and useful, hopefully) topic J

Would you like to go to the USA? I think the major part of this course would say “yeeeeah!” or “of course!” Trust me, I at least, always think about it, but… Have you ever thought about American’s ways to speak? I mean, do you know some of the slangs they use?  Could you understand a younger people’s conversation right now?

Well, yes. I am talking about informal speaking. If you want to make a travel to the United States (or any other country), you have to know that people don’t speak ‘like a sir’ all the time! (yes, like a sir, you know, like a dictionary), they use informal words in informal situations (especially young people, when they speak each other, when they chat through whatsapp, facebook, etc.), exactly like us!

Well, I’m sure all of us know what a Slang is… But, I want to share with you some of the most known and useful slangs in the United States, I bet you that some of these are words or phrases which you NEVER have seen before, but don’t worry! Here you have a tiny list to understand a little bit more:

• Adorbz: Someone adorable

•          Back Pack: XL buttocks (Do you remember when we saw Nicky Minaj’s Anaconda, or JLo and Iggy Azalea’s big booty? Right… )

·        

•       Badinkadink: Opposite to Nicky’s backpack,I mean, not very big buttocks.
•             Benjamins: The one hundred dollar bill, in which Benjamin Franklin is pictured on them. You can also use the word Bucks, referring to any US bill.

·        

•          Guetto: The poorest place in a city, is called as guetto.
•          Grenade:  A girl with a notorious overweight, called (cruely, I think) grenade because of her body shape. Don’t use this, don’t do bullying L
•          Leggo: Let’s go, like in Shakira’s song
•          The joint: In Chile you know this like caño, paraguas, pito, etc etc. So, you know what it is.

·        

•          To be iced out: Wearing a lot of shiny jewelry, especially diamonds (Ice is called diamond, bling bling)
•          To chill out: Being relaxed, calmed… Nothing worry you
•          To get busted: Being in problems because of  something
•          Whip, wheels: A car, just that.
•          YOLO: Pay attention to this… You Only Live Once, so come on! Enjoy simple things, do what you like! J You have to be cray.

Did you see that? There is A LOT of different slangs or modisms in this country, I hope da list help u 2 understand more about informal ways of speaking in the US. Maybe, this would help you when you’re in a speech, talking with someone important (of course, don’t using this words! xD ) or in a  trouble J

If you want to read and learn more about slangs and informal phrases, you can visit the following website!

http://www.coolamericanenglish.com/american-english-slang.php

or check this video, and learn more ways to speak with slangs or funny phrases

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pV6c19-3lbI

*Note: The meanings of the slangs on the list were extracted from the website Cool American English, given in the first link (cool American English).

Let your comments! :D

NZ is not all about kiwis

Hi, everyone! As you may notice, the Australia & New Zealand’s presentation was pretty focused on the “freak data”. To continue with that researching line, this post is going to be about New Zealand’s sheep and cows.

NZ has always been the centre of sheep’s jokes. In 1934, George Bernard Shaw –irish playwright, Nobel Prize in Literature on 1925- visited the country and when he was asked about his impression of NZ, he answered “altogether too many sheep”.  How he couldn’t notice, if the numbers of sheep has reached, at its time,  the peak of 70 million of them.

Nowadays, the numbers of these spongy animals has decreased to its lowest since World War II. Even when this sounds like bad news, it’s not. With nearly 30 million sheep, they still outnumber people six to one and also, are generating more money with less of them.

              (Personally, I can't help thinking that sheep will take over the power, knowing that they outnumber people. Anyway, this post is not about my fears so it's better for me to focus and continue)

      What about cows? There are about 6 million cows, making the diary industry a backbone of the NZ’s economy. Again, the numbers are very impressive: Every year, NZ produces 100 kg of butter and 65 kg of cheese per person.  I can’t even imagine that much butter and cheese.

Talking about this with my father, he told me about his own experience at NZ, back in 1972. He was a marine and he fell in love with the country immediately, but one of the things that really caught his attention was seeing big trucks loaded of different milk’s products, including something that he can’t recall has seen or tasted in Chile: Yogurt. Something that nowadays is pretty usual in every fridge was completely unknown for him.

It’s never enough when it comes to “freak data”, but it’s time to finish this entry.

Thanks for reading!

P.D: Do you remember “Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateaturipukakapikimaungahoronukupokaiwhenuakitanatahu”? It was the world’s longest place name and here is what it means in Maori: “the place where Tamatea, the man with the big knees, who slid, climbed and swallowed mountains, known as the land-eater, played his nose flute to his loved ones”. 

Animals v/s Humans

In the last week, with my group, we had to do an investigation about two really interesting countries, these were New Zealand and Australia.

We learn so much about the culture, geography and the animals from these countries, but something really rare caught our completely attention... During the investigation we realized that these countries already have a lot of animals! The information was shocking for me because (for example) Australia have more sheep than kangaroos, more kangaroos than cows and more cows than humans! This is a weird fact about the country. 

Even though, for New Zealand the story isn't different because the only 5% of population are humans and the rest (95%) are animals, like koalas and more, and more sheep! This is really crazy, don't you think so? 

Although, the population of animals in these countries are extremely high the percentages are going down with an alarming rate. In fact, the situation with the koalas in Autralia is very disappointing, because in the past they used to be like a million, but now there are not more than 11.000 koalas around the country, we can infer that this is the result of the unconscious people who don't care about the environment or these cute and innocent animals. 

The Big Five

Hello everyone I would like to share with you a topic that I found really interesting in my research about wildlife in South Africa, I'm talking about  'The Big Five' this term refers to five of Africa's greatest wild animals such as the Lion, Elephant, Leopard, Rhino And Buffalo.Those animals from the African continent are considered to be a type of trophy since hunting them is considered harder and more dangerous.

Things you didn't know about these animals:

Lions greet each other in what looks like a rather rough manner. It may seem like the animals are fighting,but nothing is what it seems since they are just greeting each other.

It's well known that the elephant is known for its intelligence but did you know that they also mourn their dead?.when an elephant dies, its herd performs a small ceremony in which the elephants caress the dead with their trunks.The ceremony is marked by loud bellowing.

Leopards carry their prey to the branches of trees because there they feel comfortable. This is also where they hunt their prey, jumping from the trees as to not be discovered since their fur acts as camouflage.

Some people say that the hippo should be included instead of the rhino because it's an animal that causes the most human fatalities on the continent.( kills 2,900 anually)

Three of these five animal are in danger of extintion ,so it's important that we are conscious of there condition and we should do more to protect them.one possible solution is to increase the fines for people who hunt these animals. We aren't too far off from eliminating these practices, an example of this is that South Africa recently changed its policies to protect animals and combat the trade of horns of the remaining rhinos which are in danger of extinction.If we all work together we can make a difference.

Here's a short video that shows 'The Big Five'

Irish Languages

Hi guys!  When I was investigating about the languages of Ireland I found some really interesting information about their language, specially about the percentages of the official languages in both Irelands, North Ireland speaks more English (98%) than Irish (95%) and in South Ireland people speaks more Irish (97%) than English (94%), also there are many other languages in the country like Shelta, Manx, Breton, Scottish and other foreign languages as Spanish, Japanese, Portuguese and the list goes on.

More important, the levels of Irish speakers in North Ireland are increasing, why is that happening? because the education in north Ireland is introducing Irish in their subjects , so that way instead of imitating England (we have to consider that North Ireland has the same religion, the same celebrations, and the same government system) they are demonstrating that they are  not part of England and that they are different form them, but in my opinion most of them are frustrated British because they are more similar than England that to their brother of the south.

In South Ireland, English is the second official language because of the cultural mix that they have, there are so many languages that Irish is not known in the entire world so in many public places English is more used than Irish, which is used in schools and in the government building, but the documents are written in both languages, that way people who doesn't know Irish can read them in English, that way there are not misunderstandings.

In the other side the travellers community (we could call them gypsies) in Ireland speaks more English, but they have their own language: Shelta, which is a mix of Irish and English, unfortunately the travellers are excluded from the society because of their culture of being nomads and staying in places where they shouldn't stay.

Official language in the United States.

Hi guys! I hope you’re all fine, I want to talk to you about an interesting subject related to the United States and the variety of languages now a days we can find there.

In order to start, is well known that USA has got a different states, all of them with their own laws, religions, cultures, etc. and because of that we can hear a variety of different languages.

United Sates population it’s varied, they came from all over the world, exists a cultural variety. Currently in this country people speak around 300 languages, that’s why English is not the official one.

Among the 10 most spoken languages in United States are: English, Spanish, Chinese, Tagalog, French, Vietnamese, German, Korean, Russian and Arabic.

This fact don’t allow that United States could have an official language because this might be consider “antidemocratic and a threat to human liberty”.

In my opinion, as I said before this is an interesting topic that will have two parts, in one hand the ones on favor and on the other hand the ones against, so personally I think that having an official language don’t affect to human liberty as one group affirms, but it’s just a way to be recognize as part of a country, as in Chile and our Spanish language.

Now, I introduce a video in which that show us different languages present in USA.

Valeria Labbé

Hurling

Hello everyone, I'll talk about something that really cought my attention while I was doing my research of Irish sports, i found out that Ireland has many different kinds of sports and the most unique among them is hurling.

Hurling is a field sport with a Gaelic and Irish origin, this game has been played for at least 2.000 years and it's believed to be the world's oldest field game. This game was brought by the Celts when the ace age was receding. When they got to Ireland, they brought all their culture along with this sport and its said that this sport illustrates the deeds of ancient heroic mystical figures of Irish folklore.

In this sport, each team has a total of 15 players, and each player uses a long wooden stick named "Hurley" to hit a little ball called "Sliotar". The game is played in a huge field that can be up to 145m long and each side has a goal. The team that scores the most points hitting the sliotar through or over the enemy goal wins.

This game also has many different rules, and it's played most of the time in western European countries, but when it comes to Ireland, hurling is extremely important like it is soccer to many Chileans i believe, Also i found out that this game is really linked to the Irish identity, because Irish people dont get paid for playing hurling, their only reward is being proud of themselves.

I found this really interesting because I noticed that Ireland is one of the few countries that still have a really deep connection with its own roots.
I hope everyone liked this article and I encourage you to watch a hurling game, they are really amazing.