Category Archives: polyglot

How to avoid mixing up closely related languages

 

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Today’s blog post continuous our series on efficient learning and revision strategies in language learning and will show you some simple methods with which you can avoid mixing up closely related languages.

A simple but very efficient method of learning or revising closely related languages is to use textbooks and learning materials written in one of the languages to learn or revise the other one. To give an example, if you tend to mix up, let’s say, Spanish and Portuguese, or Spanish and Italian, then use some materials that are written in your ‘stronger’ language of the two to revise or learn the other. The great advantage of this method is that you see the two languages directly side by side in comparison. If you compare the vocabulary when revising, you will see exactly where the two languages converge and use a very similar or even identical word or expression, and where they depart and use a quite different word or phrase. A nice side effect of this technique is also that you can practice and revise two languages at the same time. And in the case that you really do not understand a word or phrase in either of the languages, you can always look up that word or phrase in a dictionary in your native tongue. A further advantage of using materials written for speakers of one of the two languages for learning the other is that these books and resources will usually point out the pitfalls precisely for speakers of one of the languages in learning the other and often contain tips on which aspects in particular to pay attention to avoid any such mistakes and ‘false friends’.

If you prefer online-resources to books, then you can use the same technique on duolingo, both for revision and to learn a new language. One of the nice things about this platform is that many languages are available in a wide range of language combinations, especially the more popular languages, so that you can choose one that suits you best, e.g. learning Italian via Spanish, or a Spanish-Portuguese combination, etc. The system will then show you exactly where the sentences in both languages converge and depart in their vocabulary and grammatical structures. Those readers who know the platform will know how strict the system is about a very precise translation of the words and sentences. If you practice regularly in this way, you will be far less likely to mix up the similar languages over time.

Colour perception in various languages

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Today’s blog post will be about colour perception in different cultures and languages around the world.

The terms for colours cannot always be translated in a straightforward manner since some colours, esp. green and blue (“grue”) in some Asian languages, are often perceived differently from those in the West, and are considered separate colours in those countries whereas in English there is just one term for both shades or vice versa.

Russian

In Russian, there are two different terms for blue which are considered as separate colours and not just as shades of the same colour as in English: голубой (‘goluboy’) light blue and  синий (‘siniy’) dark blue.

Hungarian

In Hungarian, there are two separate terms for red: piros is a bright red and vörös is a dark red.

German

In German, there are two different terms for pink: Pink is the same bright saturated shade as in English, but when the colour is pale pink it is called rosa.

‘Grue’ or green and blue in various Asian languages

The origin of the perception of a green-blue (‘grue’) colour, which in English is called ‘teal’ or is seen as two separate colours (blue and green), comes from the Chinese character 青 (qīng).

The colour qīng 青 can mean either of the colours that in English are referred to as ‘green’, ‘blue’, or ‘black’, depending on the context and the nouns or fixed phrases it is used with. To give an example, qing means ‘blue’ when used with ‘sky’ 青天 (qīngtiān) or ‘eyes’青眼 (qīngyǎn) , but ‘black’ when used with ‘hair’ 青丝(qīngsī) and ‘green’ when used with the character for ‘mountain’ 青山 (qīngshān), ‘grass’青草 (qīngcǎo)  or ‘vegetables’ 青菜 (qīngcài).

Qing  , according to tradition, is the colour of things that are born and the term 青春 (qīngchūn ‘green spring’) means youth. This is connected to its meaning ‘black’ since young people in China have dark hair, or 青鬓 (qīng bìn) ‘black temple hair’, an idiom referring to young people. Qing can also refer to black clothes or fabrics and one of the main female roles in Chinese opera, 青衣 (qīngyī), refers to the fact that most actors wear black clothing.

Qing can also refer to the colour ‘blue’, which originates from the dye bluegrass which in ancient times was used to dye things in the colour of qing. The idiom 出於藍,而勝於藍青出于蓝,而胜于蓝 (qīngchūyúlán ér shèng yú lán, ‘blue comes from the indigo plant but is bluer than the plant itself’) describes how a student could come to excel their teacher.

The character 青qing originally derives from the components for 生 ‎’growth of plants‘ and 丹 ‎’cinnabar‘, which was also used for dyeing and by extension came to refer to ‘colour’ in general, so 青qing came to be known as the ‘colour of growing plants’ and green-blue, and came to describe a range of colours from light green through blue to deep black 玄青 (xuánqīng). Over time, the character for cinnabar was exchanged with the similar character for ‘moon’月.

The modern Mandarin Chinese language, however, also has the blue–green distinction with 蓝/ 藍 lán for blue and 绿 / 綠 for green. Another peculiarity of Chinese colour perception is the case of ‘red’ / , hóng and ‘pink’ 粉红, fěn hóng (lit.’powder red’), which are considered varieties of a single colour.

青 qing (Cantonese 廣東話 )

In Cantonese, qing 青 can describe the same range of colours as in Mandarin Chinese. It means ‘green’ when referring to grass, plants or the mountains, ‘blue’ when referring to the sky or stones, and ‘black’ or ‘young’ when referring to hair or fabrics. However, in Cantonese (廣東話), 青 qing meaning ‘black’ is still used in contexts where the use of  黑 would be inauspicious since it is a homophone of ‘乞’ (beggar), for example 黑衣, ‘black clothes’, would also mean ‘beggar’s clothes’.

Vietnamese

Vietnamese has taken over the green-blue colour perception from the ancient Chinese character and is read as xanh, which can mean both ‘green’ or ‘blue’ depending on the context. To specify which shade exactly you mean, you have to add some descriptive terms, so xanh da trời means ‘blue as the sky’, xanh dương or xanh nước biển means ‘blue as the ocean’ and xanh lá cây means ‘green like the leaves’. Vietnamese sometimes uses the terms xanh lam for blue and xanh lục for green, which derive from the Chinese characters 藍and 綠 respectively.

 

Japanese

Also Japanese has the colour green-blue, or ao ‎(hiragana あお, romaji ao, historical hiragana あを), which also derives from the ancient Chinese character and its connotations. So ao can mean ‘blue’, ‘green’ or ‘black’ depending on the context. In the case of Japanese, the colour connotation ‘black’ comes from the bluish-black colour of a horse’s hair. Ao is also used in particular to refer to the green of traffic lights and to the colour of plant leaves, vegetables and apples. By contrast, other ‘green’ objects will generally be referred to as being midori, e.g. clothes, cars, etc.

Lakota

Also in the native American language Lakota (‘Sioux’), one word is used for both blue and green, namely the term tȟó. However, a term for ‘green’ – tȟózi- has come into use, which is made up of the terms  tȟó meaning ‘blue-green’ and meaning ‘yellow’. In the same way,  zíša/šázi refers to the colour orange, šá on its own meaning ‘red’. The colour purple or violet is thus šátȟo/tȟóša.

 

 

Some interesting links for further reading on the topic:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue%E2%80%93green_distinction_in_language

http://www.theworldofchinese.com/2013/06/what-color-is-qing/

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E9%9D%92

Does your language also have a different colour perception from the English one? Let us know in the comments!! 🙂

Vocabulary: ‘traveling’ in Bulgarian and Romanian

Today’s blog post is going to take us to South Eastern Europe again, namely to Bulgaria and Romania. Since the traveling and holiday season is about to start for many people, we will look at some travel-related vocabulary in Romanian and Bulgarian. Romanian is a Romance language, of course, while Bulgarian is a Slavonic language, so the two are not related.

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How to create a language immersion environment (or a day in the life of a polyglot)

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The Tower of Babel, Pieter Bruegel the Elder, 1563

Today’s blog post is about how to create a language immersion environment at the place where you live, which will permit you to learn your target language(s) naturally by ‘absorbing’ them in your daily life. Learning a language to fluency is perfectly possible even if you cannot travel to the country where it is spoken and spend some longer periods of time there. I personally learned all of my languages from abroad and never in the countries where they are spoken (with exception of my two second languages), and I have done so via an immersive environment which I created for myself. This is not difficult and to illustrate how it can be done, I will describe a ‘typical’ week in my life in the following paragraphs. 🙂

To start with, I have to say that I am a freelancer with several, very different, jobs, so each day I have to perform quite different tasks which permit me to integrate my language practice to a greater or lesser extent into my daily routine, depending on which task is due on a particular day. One thing I virtually never ever (!!) do is sitting at a desk studying a language from a textbook! My daily language learning routine is completely integrated into my daily life and cannot be separated from it – I virtually live my life in the different languages I speak 🙂 . In this way, I also manage to practice (and learn) my languages for about more than 20 or 30 hours each week.

So how do I integrate my language learning into my daily life? On a typical day, one of the first things I do each morning is to study my current main target languages from a textbook for about 15-30 minutes, sometimes longer, even before getting up properly. While getting ready for the day, I usually learn some new vocabulary in the otherwise ‘lost’ time (= while making breakfast, getting dressed, etc.) – in my opinion it is the most time-efficient way of learning vocabulary . 🙂

Often, when my work for that day permits it, I also hone my language skills while working:  Especially good for language practice are days on which I have to perform ‘manual’ tasks which leave my mind free to wander, like illustrating, or designing or making/assembling new products. This often gives me the opportunity to listen to language tapes in various languages for several hours at a time while working.  Sometimes, my work also involves customer service for a small business I work for, and this correspondence will then be in any language the customer has chosen to write in – another opportunity to practice my skills. So if your work permits it and you want to integrate more language practice into your daily life, try listening to language tapes while you work instead of to the radio or to music (unless they are in one of your target languages of course 🙂 ). On other days, for example when I have to work on machines which are too loud to permit the use of audiotapes, I usually learn vocabulary while working. So during an average workday, I can often integrate quite a substantial amount of extra learning practice, though not always.

In my free time, I continue learning and using my languages, both directly and indirectly.  A language learning practice I really do every single day (!!) is listening to the Word of the Day online, in about 40 languages (in every language for which I have found a daily post!) . This takes me about an hour, on the average 1-2 minutes for each language. This might not seem like much, but this adds up quite substantially over the course of a month and a year: 1-2 minutes per day per language means at least (!!) 7-15 minutes of language practice per week in each of these c.40 languages, and again at least 30-60 minutes of practice per month for each language, etc.! Then, I have recently joined duolingo, which is quite fun, and where I have signed up for the intensive streak of 5 exercices per day, but I usually do more than that since it is quite addictive 🙂 . So there I spend another hour or so practising languages, learning new ones as well as using it to brush up old ones.

Internet: This is another great opportunity if you want to immerse yourself in your target languages. Whenever I use twitter, I log in using a different language each time. 🙂 Both my twitter and facebook feeds are multilingual themselves (!!) – I pursue my hobbies in my various languages! So I do not only follow and read posts about learning languages, but I subscribe to pages about my various interests in a variety of languages, so that my newsfeed is totally multilingual. To illustrate this, if your interest is kittens for example 😉 , search for facebook pages about kittens in the languages you are learning .and subscribe to them, if your interest is politics, subscribe to political pages from various countries, etc. So in this way you can both pursue an interest that personally captivates you while practising your target languages at the same time. This is what immersion is all about, namely that language learning cannot be distinguished from ordinary life any more and that you start to live your life in the languages. 🙂

My final language practice of an average day takes place at night. I don’t have a TV, so I never watch movies every night like most people do. Instead, I enjoy reading. Often, I spend another 30 minutes or an hour working through a textbook (on nights with plenty of time) or just reading (in any language). But each night before going to bed, I read the Harry Potter books for at least an hour, usually in one of my intermediate-level languages to take them to a higher level eventually. (See a previous blog post of mine on how you can use the Harry Potter books or any other novels to boost your intermediate language skills). So on an average day, I manage to immerse myself in my languages at the very least for 3 or 4 hours, if not more. 🙂 And this time is NOT spent studying at a desk 🙂 .

I rarely watch movies, but if I do, I get myself a DVD and watch it in my target language. If I am proficient in the language, I use no subtitles, but if it is in one of my intermediate languages, I usually turn on the subtitles in the target language (NOT in English!!) so I can read along if I don’t understand something. I find this really helps to improve my skills. Another thing I do very frequently is just listening to films (usually documentaries, which I prefer) while working on the computer. Mostly I don’t need to see the pictures or the footage, and this is a great way of honing my listening comprehension. 🙂

As you can see, language immersion does not require you to actually live in the countries to be immersed in the language, you just have to create an environment in your daily life in which you live your life in the language.

 

 

 

 

 

 

How to improve your intermediate reading comprehension through parallel reading of literature

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Today’s blog post is about how you can magically improve and boost your intermediate reading comprehension through parallel reading of literature, e.g. the ‘Harry Potter’ books 🙂 .

All you need is a book in your target language and the same book in your native language (or in another language you are very proficient and advanced in) as well as two bookmarks, so you can read them in parallel. This will make a dictionary redundant.

I personally collect the ‘Harry Potter’- books in all languages, but not as a “collector’s item” but actually to read them in these languages. The ‘Harry Potter’-books are great to improve your reading comprehension especially in ‘minor’ languages, since they are often available even in smaller languages where it is otherwise virtually impossible to get hold of literature in the language unless you travel to the country and bring them home with you. But you can use virtually any book in your target language for which you can get a copy also in your native language. However, popular books like bestsellers, the ‘Harry Potter’-series or ‘Le Petit Prince‘ (The Little Prince) by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, that are collected even by people who cannot speak the languages, are best since they are widely available in many languages (even though they may often be quite expensive!).

So how does this method, parallel reading, work? Basically, you have both books open at the same page and read them alongside each other. However, in order to be efficient to improve your existing intermediate reading skills, you ought to read the text in your target language first, and only check the book in your native language when you really don’t understand something. Done persistently and regularly, this will soon boost your reading skills and you don’t need a dictionary for it.

Another way in which parallel reading can be highly instructive is in comparative reading of both texts. For this, you read each sentence in sequence, first in your target language, then in your native language, all the while comparing how each expression is translated and rendered in your target language. This will not only teach you useful expressions, but it will also teach you something about the translating process. It will also make you familiar with the way sentences are structured in your target language, which can be highly valuable.

Where can you find popular books like the Harry Potter-series or Le Petit Prince in many languages? If you have any second-hand or antiquarian bookstores near where you live, it is always worth a visit going there first to see if they might not have the title you are looking for, as they might be considerably cheaper if bought used, apart from being better for the environment, especially since you need the book also in your native language. If you don’t have any such bookstore near where you live or they do not have your title, try to search on Amazon: type in the title plus ‘in [insert target language of your choice]’, e.g. ‘Harry Potter in Spanish’ or ‘Harry Potter Spanish version/edition’. This ought to bring up some results for many, though unfortunately not for all, languages. 🙂

Do you also collect a certain series of books or a book from a certain author which you like to read in a foreign language? Tell us about it in the comments! 🙂

Focus on architecture: Badgir or Malqaf (windcatchers)

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Today’s blog post is taking us to the Middle East again, to Persia, India and the Arab world, and to a special architectural feature of these hot regions of Asia, namely the so-called badgir or windcatcher (wind tower) (Persian: بادگیر bâdgir, from bâd ‘wind’ + gir ‘catcher’, Arabic malqaf  الملاقف )(Arabic: also known as barjeel  بارجيل )

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The Badgir can be found in all regions of Asia which were historically influenced by the Persian Empire. It is a windcatcher or windscoop that usually takes the form of a tower or turret and which is installed on roofs, often one for each room. It is usually built in a fixed position on the roof with one downward opening since the locally prevailing winds always blow from the same direction. The badgir tower has small slots or vents which admit the wind and deflect it down a shaft, which often reaches to the ground floor, and at the bottom of which is an opening. Air circulation is guaranteed by the difference in air pressure on the wind side and leeward side of the house. The air flowing into the interior of the building can still be warmer than the air already inside, but a cooling effect is achieved by the enhanced evaporation caused by the constant airflow, which moves humid and stale air. To increase the cooling effect, water vessels are often placed inside the shaft or damp straw mats are hung across the vent.

The badgir‘s effectiveness in cooling has led to its being used as a refrigerating device, e.g. for water reservoirs (Ab anbar) (Farsi: ab anbar آب انبار‎‎  ab = ‘water’, anbar ‘storage facility’).

Badgirs have been in use for at least 500 years, their exact origin being uncertain, but they have already been known in Ancient Egypt.

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Author: Guillaume Blanchard, via Wikipedia Commons Maison miniature : Pièce de jeu (?) en ivoire provenant d’une tombe d’Abou Roach (près du Caire) contemporaine du roi Den (Période thinite)

An interesting article on ab anbars: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ab_anbar

Is there also a similar architectural device in your culture?? Tell us about it in the comments! 🙂

 

Vocabulary: ‘Rice’ in Indonesian and Asian languages

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Today’s blog post is taking us to Asia again, to Indonesia and Japan and China, and to the various words for ‘rice’. Unlike in western languages, where there is just one word for any type of rice, in many Asian languages, there are different terms for ‘rice’ depending on what condition the rice is in, i.e. whether it is raw grains, cooked rice or still a rice plant.

In Balinese (Basa Bali) the various term for ‘rice’ are:

Pantun = rice plant (indon. padi)

sawah or manik galih = rice field/paddy

beras or baas = raw rice, rice grains

nasi = cooked rice

ketan = sticky rice

The Indonesian word for ‘rice plant’, padi, is the origin of the English term for paddy field. 🙂

There are also different words for ‘rice’ in Japanese and Chinese (Mandarin).

In Japanese, these are:

ine =rice plant

kome = rice grains, uncooked rice

白米 hakumai = white rice, polished rice

momi = rough rice

玄米 genmai = brown rice, unpolished rice

ご飯 gohan = cooked rice

餅米 mochigome = sticky rice

水田suiden = paddy field, rice field

And the Chinese terms for different kinds of rice are:

米饭 Mǐfàn = cooked rice

大米 Dàmǐ = raw rice

糯米饭 Nuòmǐ fàn = sticky rice

稻田 Dàotián = paddy field, rice field

 Does your language also have different terms for rice? Tell us about them in the comments! 🙂

 

Focus on culture: Święconka in Poland

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Author: Błażej Benisz via Wikipedia Commons Deacon blessing the Easter food (Święconka), Ołtarzew, Poland 2007

Today’s blog post is taking up the topic of my last blog post, and is keeping us in Poland and in Eastern Europe for a little while longer.

Easter is an important holiday in Poland and a popular Polish Easter tradition is the ‘blessing of the Easter baskets’,  or Święconka [ɕvʲɛnˈtsɔnka], on Easter or Holy Saturday. Baskets lined with a white linen or a lace or embroidered napkin are decorated with evergreen twigs of bukszpan (boxwood) and ribbons, and filled with a selection of Easter foods and are then taken to church to be blessed.

The foods in the basket all have a special symbolic meaning:

  • chleb (bread), symbolizing Jesus
  • jaja (eggs) [jaja na twardo barwione w łupinkach cebulihard-boiled eggs dyed in onion skins] , symbolizing Christ’s resurrection
  • kiełbasę (sausage) or ham, symbolizing abundance
  • sól i pieprz (salt and pepper), symbolizing purification
  • owieczka (a lamb), either as a figurine or as a cake or bread in lamb-shape, symbolizing Christ
  • chrzan (horseradish), symbolizing the bitter sacrifice of Christ

Depending on the parish, the baskets are either lined up on tables or taken to the front of the altar in a procession of the parishioners. The priest or deacon then sprinkles the baskets with holy water, using either a straw brush or a metal aspergillum (i.e. a liturgical sprinkling wand). Special prayers addressing the various contents of the baskets, i.e. the eggs, cakes, meat, etc., are said. Traditionally, the blessed food remains untouched either until Saturday afternoon or Sunday morning.

The Christian custom of Easter eggs has a long history, reaching as far back as ancient Mesopotamia, where early Christians stained eggs red in memory of the blood shed by Christ at his crucifixion. The Church officially adopted this custom, and eggs came to symbolize the resurrection of Christ: The hard egg shell symbolizes the sealed Tomb of Christ, which, when cracked open, symbolizes Christ’s resurrection from the dead and the empty tomb left behind. Another interpretation sees the egg as being dormant, while containing seed for new life and renewal.

The custom of Easter baskets is also observed in some other Slavic countries, like Croatia.

Is there a similar custom in your country or region? Tell us about it in the comments! 🙂

 

Vocabulary: The bedroom in Catalan and Basque

Today we continue our series of comparing vocabulary of a geographic region. We are going to Spain again, and to be more exact, to the minority languages spoken there, Catalan (Català) and Basque (Euskara). Both Catalan and Basque are also spoken in the South of France in the areas bordering Spain. Basque is an isolate language that is unrelated to any other language and it is believed to be one of the few surviving pre-Indoeuropean languages of Europe. Catalan is a Romance language and is basically a mix of both Iberian-Romance and Gallo-Romance influences, since it shares vocabulary and grammatical features with both Spanish and French.basque bedroomcatal bedroom

Focus on culture: Martenitsa and Baba Marta (Bulgaria)

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Author: Gustav @ Flickr, via Wikipedia Commons

Today’s blog post continues our culture series about interesting customs from all over the world and takes us to Bulgaria again and to Baba Marta Day with its Martenitsi which is celebrated on 1 March.

According to Bulgarian folklore Баба Марта, Baba Marta or ‘Grandma March’, is a grumpy old lady who is grudging at her two brothers and whose mood is said to determine the weather, so the sun only shines when she is smiling. There are different versions of the Baba Marta tale. One of them relates that Baba Marta is doing her spring cleaning on this day: While she is shaking her feather-filled blanket, all the feathers come out of it and fall down to Earth as the last snow of the year. This version of the tale has parallels to the German folktale of Mother Hulda (‘Frau Holle‘).

Bulgarians celebrate 1 March by observing the centuries-old custom of exchanging Мартеници Martenitsi in order to ask Baba Marta for mercy, in the hope that winter will pass faster and spring come sooner.

A Martenitsa (Bulgarian: мартеница, Macedonian: мартинка) is a small woollen ornament, made of red and white interwoven yarn, which usually takes the shape of two dolls, a male and a female. These are called Пижо и Пенда (Pizho and Penda): The male Pizho is predominantly white, while the female Penda is predominantly red and wears a skirt. Sometimes, the Martenitsi just take the shape of a red-and-white interwoven ribbon. The Martenitsi are good luck charms symbolizing health and happiness for the year and are said to protect against evil spirits. They are also a reminder that spring is near.

Martenitsa

Author: Petko Yotov, via Wikipedia Commons Pizho and Penda

Traditionally, they are given away as gifts to friends and family, i.e. not bought for oneself, and are worn around the wrist or attached to one’s clothes for a certain period of time, usually until the first signs of spring appear, e.g. the sightings of a swallow, a stork or a crane, or blossoming trees. Then the Мартеници (Martenitsi) are removed. In the small mountain villages, people also decorate their homes and domestic animals with the Martenitsi. There are different rituals associated with the removal of the Martenitsi, which are different in every region. Some people tie their Martenitsi on a branch of a fruit tree, thereby also giving the tree the good luck that comes from the charm.Other people lay their Martenitsi under a rock, in the belief that the insect that will be closest to the charm the next morning will determine the owner’s health and luck for the rest of the year: If the insect is a worm червей or a larva ларви, the coming year will be full of success and health; if it is an ant мравка, the person will have to work hard to be successful; however, if the insect is a spider паяк, the person may not enjoy success or good health in the year to come.

The red and white colours of the charms are also associated with a colour symbolism: white бял symbolizes purity and red червен life and passion. At its origin, the custom therefore symbolized the cycles of life and death, good and evil, and of sorrow and happiness in human existence. White originally also stood for Man and the power of the sun, and under Christian influence came to stand for virginity and integrity and was the colour of Christ. Red stood for Woman and health, being a symbol of blood, conception and birth. The colours of the Martenitsi also symbolize Mother Nature: white symbolizes the purity associated with melting snow, while red stands for the colour of the setting sun.

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Author: Danielgrad via Wikipedia Commons Magnolia full of tied Martenitsa, in Veliko Tarnovo (Велико Търново)

 The custom of exchanging Martenitsi is thought to have been inspired by an incident in the life of Bulgaria’s first Khan Аспарух (Asparuh), who sent a white string to his wife to let her know that he survived a battle. 

A similar tradition also exists in the Republic of Macedonia, as well as in Albania, Northern Greece, Romania and Moldova. Its origin derives from ancient pagan agricultural cults of nature common to the Balkan Peninsula. The specific ritual of tying red-and-white woolen strings suggests Thracian, Hellenic or even Roman origins of the tradition.

Is there a similar tradition associated with spring in your country or region? Tell us about it in the comments! 🙂