*puts on nerd glasses*
One of the things that managed to captured my interest would be language. I'm generally intrigued of what made us talk different languages despite being the same species. I know animal sounds are different from one habitat to the next, but somehow I'm still on the big WHY - why is there a difference? Thus this pondering made me look at my mother tongue - Malay. Malay supposed to be evolved from Sanskrit and there's a lot of influence from Arabic, Chinese, English and some others. The WHY is clear - long time ago, Tanah Melayu was an important trading port that served to be the meeting point of traders from China and Arab. Put that in a few hundreds of years, there bound to be some assimilations of culture and, of course, language.
Though this raise another question mark to me. Why is there a difference how a gesture or well-wishing? Take Malay for example. Whenever we are well-wishing for something, we say "Selamat" like in "Selamat Hari Jadi", "Selamat Jalan" etc. 'Selamat' is a borrowed word from Arabic, 'Salam' that roughly translated to 'Peace', or 'Safe' I think. Perhaps it was intended to wish to the recipient of the well-wishing to have a 'safe birthday', and 'safe journey'. But for English, the word Happy was used instead as in to celebrate an occasion in happiness and joy. Perhaps there was a different views of how one see what's important to well-wishing somebody. For us, it's important to have a peaceful and safe occasion while the Westerners sees happiness to be the point. The difference in cultures just beautiful, don't you think?
I can ponder on this for days and months. In the meantime, starting tomorrow, all Muslim in the world will undergo fasting for 30 days of the holy month of Ramadhan. It's my favorite month of the year because it was the only time I won't be goaded and tempted to eat to impossible fill of my already blubbery belly. Hopefully, I can shed a few kilos too though I'm being too optimistic since I never did. My body lost the ability to lose weight ever since I reached puberty. Since I hate sweating (read; exercise) and don't know how to cook other than omelets, I was left with only dieting. Meh.
Anyways. Have a Happy Fasting month, and hopefully you will be safe one! Selamat Berpuasa ppl~!
Though this raise another question mark to me. Why is there a difference how a gesture or well-wishing? Take Malay for example. Whenever we are well-wishing for something, we say "Selamat" like in "Selamat Hari Jadi", "Selamat Jalan" etc. 'Selamat' is a borrowed word from Arabic, 'Salam' that roughly translated to 'Peace', or 'Safe' I think. Perhaps it was intended to wish to the recipient of the well-wishing to have a 'safe birthday', and 'safe journey'. But for English, the word Happy was used instead as in to celebrate an occasion in happiness and joy. Perhaps there was a different views of how one see what's important to well-wishing somebody. For us, it's important to have a peaceful and safe occasion while the Westerners sees happiness to be the point. The difference in cultures just beautiful, don't you think?
I can ponder on this for days and months. In the meantime, starting tomorrow, all Muslim in the world will undergo fasting for 30 days of the holy month of Ramadhan. It's my favorite month of the year because it was the only time I won't be goaded and tempted to eat to impossible fill of my already blubbery belly. Hopefully, I can shed a few kilos too though I'm being too optimistic since I never did. My body lost the ability to lose weight ever since I reached puberty. Since I hate sweating (read; exercise) and don't know how to cook other than omelets, I was left with only dieting. Meh.
Anyways. Have a Happy Fasting month, and hopefully you will be safe one! Selamat Berpuasa ppl~!