Mango Languages

Christmas Around the World

According to Andy Williams, Christmas is the most wonderful time of the year. In recent history, it may also be the most sensationalized holiday as well. Countries all over the world from the U.S. to Italy, or even to Japan celebrate this holiday every year, even if only a small portion of their populations are Christian. It’s really quite amazing.

For instance, every year in Russia, the holiday of Christmas is observed on January 7^th through the church. This is because the Russian Orthodox Church uses the Julian Calendar, which is 13 days behind the Gregorian Calendar used in most Western Countries. More and more these days, Christmas is being celebrated on the 25^th of December in Russia, though Church celebrations are generally still on the 7^th.

By contrast, Japan celebrates Christmas one day early, on the 24^th of December. This is an example of a country where Christmas is generally observed mostly as a commercial holiday. Stores begin having sales around the beginning of December, donned with Christmas trees, Santa Clauses, gifts and decorations, but only about 1% of the population of Japan is actually Christian. Christmas cake with strawberries and whipped cream is the general Christmas food, along with fried chicken. Wild!

It’s so interesting to think about all the different ways Christmas is celebrated throughout the world. Whether it has mostly religious undertones, or commercial undertones, Christmas is a genuinely recognized time of good will and gift giving around the world.
Tell us about how you’ve seen or heard of Christmas being celebrated! Do you and your loved ones celebrate it any certain way?

The World Cup: Bringing People Together One Game at a Time

Watching the World Cup go through it’s process of selecting host cities this week was fascinating. So many different countries with such varied cultures all vying to host the same international spectacle is not something we get to witness often. And what an eventful year! Not only does Russia get to host the games, forcing them to pump billions of dollars into their infrastructure to prepare, but there is also going to be the first World Cup in the Middle East when Qatar hosts the games in 2022. The average American may not realize the significance that the tournament has on world culture, but it is huge. The World Cup is an international, cross-cultural, unifying event rivaled only by the Olympics.

It got me thinking about the unification of cultures across our world. We tend to see different countries as incredibly foreign…no pun intended. We are far too often focused on the things that separate our cultures, rather than the things we share. It is profound to think that a simple game like soccer can be such a touchstone for so many citizens of the earth, regardless of where they are from.

On some level, the same could be said for language. When I was in high school, I opted to take Latin instead of Spanish. I can’t recall why…probably because there was a cute girl in the Latin class. That’s not the point. The point is, having a background in Latin has helped tremendously while studying new languages on Mango. I have found that Latin is the base for most of the romantic languages and elements can still be found in all of them. To think that a language spread out across the world and morphed into the dialog of so many different cultures is kind of awe-inspiring. Here is something that the citizens of these countries use everyday…language…and it can all be traced back to one source. Without even realizing it, the very words they say connect them to people on the other side of the Earth.

So, whether it’s a sport or simply the words we use, times like this show us that there are many things that join us with the rest of the world that we don’t usually consider. Almost as much fun as exploring the world and discovering all the things that make us unique, is exploring the world and finding the things that make us the same. I have absolutely no idea who is going to win the tournament in ’18 or ’22, but I know the world will be watching it and talking about it. Thanks to Mango and my old Latin teacher, I might just understand what they have to say.

The more I learn here on Mango, the smaller the world gets…that’s one of my favorite things about it.

Design Act 2010

All things industrial design are included in this festival held from August 31^st to September 5^th by the Moscow Centre for Contemporary Art (The Winzavod).  Being the 4^th annual Design Festival, this has been done in a similar fashion by major cities like Tokyo, London, New York, and Vienna.

This festival has transformed from a professionals-only event to a country-wide Festival, increasing the interest in industrial design among both young people and consumers.  While this may not be your typical “PARTY” Festival, it is still attended by people of all ages, classes, and professions.

Anything from bicycles, to decorations, to various multimedia and filmmaking exhibitions can be found during the course of the festival.

If you’re interested in design, this is definitely something you’ll want to check out!

Learn Russian

Russian is the most geographically widespread language of Eurasia, the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages, and the largest native language in Europe. Russian belongs to the family of Indo-European languages and is one of three living members of the East Slavic languages, the others being Belarusian and Ukrainian (and possibly Rusyn, in Ukraine considered a dialect of Ukrainian and recognized in some countries).

The Russian language is primarily spoken in Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Belarus, and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics of the USSR. During the Soviet period, the policy toward the languages of the various other ethnic groups fluctuated in practice. Though each of the constituent republics had its own official language, the unifying role and superior status was reserved for Russian. Following the break-up of the USSR in 1991, several of the newly independent states have encouraged their native languages, which has partly reversed the privileged status of Russian, though its role as the language of post-Soviet national discourse throughout the region has continued.

Russian is the official language of Russia. It is also an official language of Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and the unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine. There are several opinions on how many dialects that Russia has. Some say two and some say three all based on regions.

If you get ambitious you could try Russian, once you have learned Russian you can begin to communicate with other Slav speakers.