Nimavenl - Nicole's Random Ramblings

Have you ever smiled when hearing a favourite quote or instantly liked someone because of the book they happened to be gushing about? Language connects us and words are powerful. The way we use them says a lot about who we are as people and as a society. Personally, I'd love to live in a world where insulting or belittling others is unncessary and hurting others using words is a thing of the past. A world where people talk to each other, accept and respect others as they are and do not feel the need to try to change people just because they don't happen to think or believe as we do. I am very much in favour of free speech and believe it is extremely important that people are able to honestly say (and write) what they think or feel, without having to fear for their lives. However I also believe that it is important that we respect others as they are, without belittling them using words or actions and without the need to insult the choices people have made in their lives or be...

I love how easy it is to copy words, head over to Google Translate, paste the words and find a translation online without having to search through a dictionary to find the words. Having translated to and from languages I know, I understand that Google Translate is not foolproof or always right, however translations tend to make sense, especially when one understands the context of the words one wants to translate. With the recent murder of Özgecan Aslan in Turkey and my desire to learn more about what people write about that, I've been trying to translate Turkish via Google Translate. Whether I translate to Dutch or to English does not seem to matter - I am stumped by sentences that barely make sense to me. I'm used to being able to to translate Arabic and Hebrew with relative ease... I can only hope that Turkish translations will soon be as easy. I learnt some basic Turkish a very, very long time ago from friends. These days, I can still say some swearwords, count to ten and...

Last night I posted a photo of a very foggy street - which, due to the fog, was pretty much invisible - and asked myself what would happen if flesh-eating zombies suddenly came out of the fog to roam our streets. Trying to find descriptive words that somehow work well with vague photos of trees and descriptions of fog and mist and zombies, I came across the following explanation for the word haze. I like language and am no stranger to complaining about Dutch / European weather, which makes this description a must-share. Do enjoy! Haze    n.   1706, probably a back-formation of hazy. Sense of "confusion, vagueness" is 1797. The English differentiation of haze, mist, fog (and other dialectal words) is unmatched in other tongues, where the same word generally covers all three and often "cloud" as well, and this may be seen as an effect of the English climate on the language.   Word Origin and History for haze  | Dictionary.com

Lariekoek en apekool, zo heet het vrijdag de dertiende nummer van Kinderen voor Kinderen, van cd nummer dertien. Ik vond het vroeger een fantastisch nummer en zodra ik zag dat het vandaag vrijdag de dertiende is, had ik het deuntje te pakken. "Iedereen is bang voor nummer dertien. Bang voor zwarte katten en ladders op straat..." Ik ben niet iemand die bang is om zwarte katten te zien of onder ladders door te lopen, al zal ik eerst zorgen dat er geen glazenwasser met volle emmer water bovenaan de ladder staat... Ik gooi geen zout over mijn schouder, vind het niet nodig om 'af te kloppen' en ben zeker niet bijgelovig. Mijn oom en tante grapten vroeger wel eens dat als er een UFO op straat zou landen, ik de eerste zou zijn om de aliens tegemoet te rennen. Ze hadden gelijk. Ik ben nu zeker wat voorzichtiger maar niet minder gek op verhalen over buitenaardse wezens, monsters, weerwolven, vampieren, geesten, spoken, elven, kabouters enzovoorts. Nadat ik dit liedje leerd...

There was a terrorist attack on the office of satirical paper Charlie Hebdo last Wednesday which killed twelve people, the murder of an unarmed policewoman last Thursday and the hostage-taking at a kosher deli resulting in four deaths on Friday. It's been a week of being glued to the television and laptop, a week of checking websites and social media feeds for information, answers and others' opinions about what is going on in our world. Predictably, there are those who loudly scream that Islam is evil or that all Muslims are evil. Please, give me a break. Extremism is what's dangerous, and thinking that your way being superior to another's way allows you to kill them when you disagree about something as insignificant as a satirical drawing. I had never heard of Charlie Hebdo before Wednesday, had never seen a single one of their cartoons. Even though I live in western Europe, even though I started learning French in primary school, even though I've been to Fran...

I love language and especially love reading books and stories that play with language or show the author's love for language. Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll is one such story. I'd known the story of Alice in Wonderland for years before actually sitting down to read the book as an adult. What struck me was not only how much I enjoyed the fun and craziness of Alice's adventures, but how much I enjoyed the author's way with words. The simple yet exquisite beauty of the words on the page as they come together into a whimsical whole is simply amazing to me. Source: Quote HD.com I also love tales set in magical or fantastical worlds like the amazing Anne Bishop's Black Jewels books or J. R. R. Tolkien's extremely intricate world of Middle Earth . Alternate realities are very interesting to explore as well, worlds that are similar to yet different from our own. I like how they often provide great insights into our own world and our own thinking, despite so...

I LOVE Shakespeare! To me, Shakespeare's works are amazing stories that will definitely stand the test of time. They can also be hard to read / watch and thus hard to understand. The English language has changed and evolved since the time of Shakespeare, yet Shakespeare's works remain as they are - brilliantly written however not in today's language.  There have, over the years, been many attempts to convert Shakespeare's plays to the modern era. Look at for instance the 1999 movie 10 Things I Hate About You ( link ) starring tragically brilliant Heath Ledger and the amazing Julia Stiles. Based on The Taming of the Shrew, this movie is set in modern-day USA with the characters speaking modern-day American English. Other Shakespeare adaptations set in the modern day or adapted to the modern day are for instance the 1994 animated movie The Lion King ( link ) which is/ seems based on Hamlet and 2006's Amanda Bynes / Channing Tatum movie She's The Man ( link ) ...