Hogmanay

On the 31^st December each year the whole of Scotland comes alive for the celebration of Hogmanay. It  begins on the last day of the year and continues right through the night until the morning of the 1^st January and has sometimes been known to carry on through to the 2^nd or even 3rd January. That is some party!

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Happy Christmas! Feliz Navidad! Joyeux Noel! Shub Naya Baras!

Christmas is a Christian religious ceremony which is generally celebrated every year on 25 December.  It commemorates the birth or Nativity of Jesus of Nazareth and is celebrated mainly by Christians, although it has become popular with non-Christians as a secular cultural festival.   The birth is remembered with religious festivities and recreations of the Nativity, which is re-enacted by children at school nativity plays. Christmas Day is an official national holiday in most Western countries.

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Tibetan Students Protest over Language Reforms

Tibetan students in Beijing and Tongren have recently demonstrated against planned education reforms in the Qinghai Province.  The reforms threaten to limit the use of the Tibetan language in schools and many believe the region’s Tibetan population will have to study in Mandarin Chinese in the future, which they see as an erosion of their own language and culture. Read more

Did you know … Penguins are Welsh

Compilers of the new online version of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) have highlighted the influence of Wales on the English language.  The dictionary claims to be the only English dictionary that tries to get to the roots of the first known use of every word in the English language.   Read more