Let us be EQUALITY and DIVERSITY CHAMPIONS!!!

Are you passionate about Justice and Fairness?

Are you excited about Equality?

Are you delirious about Diversity?

Are you interested in new challenges?

Are you more understanding and less judgemental towards other cultures?

Do you want to help change our world?

Do you have original ideas to bring about changes?

Are you for Fair Trade?

Are you politically correct?

Have you developed a sense of inclusion?

Do you avoid making stereotypical assumptions about others?

Are you against deeply ingrained stereotypes?

Do you try to understand cultural diversity, accepting that each culture has its assets and its flaws? (We should try to pick up the best in every culture)

Are you against all sorts of discrimination?

Are you against the gender pay gap?

Do you support minorities: ethnicity, religion, gender, sexual orientation, disabled people, older people,etc..?

Are you for SUPERDIVERSITY: immigration from many different countries? 

Are you for intercultural dialogue?

Have you broadened your mind by travelling? Any culture shock or clash? 

 

If you answered  "yes" to any of the above questions then we NEED you...

IT TAKES ALL SORTS TO MAKE A WORLD, so the saying goes, and no one should be excluded. Exclusion is typical of dictatorial regimes. Diversity should be enriching and not a liability.

I´ve often been asked what this place would be like without expatriates, immigrants or tourists. " A very drab, shabby, bleak place, indeed" It´s my answer. Could you imagine London or New York without cultural diversity?

BE OFF-BEAT. Uniformity is boring. Conformity is against the human grain. We need original creative people who can view that a better world is possible.

Governments all around the world have been changing their attitudes  to immigration, from an open door policy of welcoming all the cultures to a frontiers closed policy due to the economic recession.

As the human rights poster stated: " If our God is Jewish, your car is Japanese, your pizza italian, your gas is algerian, your coffee is brasilian or colombian, your numbers are arabic, your alphabet latin, your shop is chinese, HOW DARE YOU CALL YOUR NEXT DOOR NEIGHBOUR A FOREIGNER?

 

A SHORT CULTURAL DIVERSITY TEST

-WHAT NUMBER IS UNLUCKY IN  JAPAN, EUROPE?

-WHAT NUMBER IS LUCKY  IN CHINA, USA, THAILAND, EUROPE?

-WHAT CAN WARD OFF EVIL IN GALICIA, MEXICO, INDIA?

-WHAT HAPPENS TO A CHILD´S TOOTH IN THE U.K., SPAIN, JAPAN,etc..?

WHO IS A HERO AND WHO IS A VILLAIN ACCORDING TO HISTORIANS? Classify the characters in the following list:

Christopher Columbus, Torquemada, Attila, Sulla, Nero, Hitler, Franco, The Duke of Alba, Ivan IV, Julius Caesar, Selim I the Grim, The Marquis of Sade, Ali Pasha, Ferdinand VII, Mariano Melgarejo, José Mª Aznar, Robin Hood, Juan M. Sánchez Gordillo, Hernán Cortés, Francisco Pizarro, Osama Bin laden,  King Phillip II, Emperor Charles V, Fedinand III, etc...

NOMINATIONS FOR  World INFAMY...And the oscar to the nastiest or most obnoxious person goes to....

-WHAT IS TRENDY AND WHAT IS TRADITIONAL NOWADAYS IN YOUR OWN CULTURE?

-HOW DO YOU EXPRESS WELCOME IN SRI LANKA, EUROPE, MUSLIM COUNTRIES,etc..?

 

 

No,No,No!!! NOVEMBER

It was the ninth month in Rome and Thomas Hood wrote a famous poem about it complaining about the lack of life and daylight in November. My tribute to this month tries to express all the words starting with no...

See if you can understand them and their connections and as a task project NOta Bene:N.B.
Try inventing something similar regarding the other eleven months....

NOWHERE   NOW  HERE    EREWHON  UTOPIA? MARI-NO-LEDA?

NONE  NOTHING  NOBODY   NOHOW

NOAH´S ARK, NOEL?

NOB  NOBILITY  SNOB

NOBEL PRIZE IG-NOBLE PRIZE

NO MADNESS LIKE NOMADNESS

NOMENCLATURE  NOMINATE NOMINATIVE  NOUN  GNOME

NONAGENARIAN  AUTONOMY INNOVATION

NONSENSE SNOTTY NOOLIGANS (R.Mc Gough)

NONENTITY NONSUCH  NONPLUS

NO   NOT NOPE   SNOPES

NORTH,  NORMAN,  NORSE,  NORWEGIAN

NOSE, NOSTRIL, NOSEY  NOISE  NOISY

NOTARY, NOTE, NOTATION, NOTION,NOTICE, NOTORIOUS ,NOTIFY

NOVEL, NOVELIST, NOVICE

NOON   NO ON  NOW ON , NOW OFF

MO-NOVIAN

NOMOPHOBIA(NO MOBILE PHONE.....)

NO;NO NO (Rehab Amy Winehouse) NO WOMAN NO CRY (B. Marley)

Finally, I´ve learnt to say NO-see- ember....NO-LEDGE. NO KNOWLEDGE our deadly friend (P.Sinfield)

NOSTALGIA....´s just another word that starts with NO (Michael Robbins) 

What´s Movember?

HOW TO "ACTUALLY" SPLIT AN INFINITIVE...

The notion that the split infinitive is grammatically wrong is based on traditonal grammar books, which took their rules from Latin.
 A SPLIT INFINITIVE is just a grammatical construction in which a word or phrase, usually an adverb, comes between  TO and the bare infinitive of a verb.

See if these sentences could be expressed in a different way without changing the meaning:

 

YOU HAVE TO RELUCTANTLY DO YOUR HOMEWORK

I PROMISE TO NEVER PLAY ANYTHING ORIGINAL

SHE´S GOT TO REALLY WATCH OUT FOR THIEVES

I NEED TO IMMEDIATELY VISIT THE LOO

I AM GOING TO THOROUGHLY WASH THE DOG

THIS WAS MEANT TO BETTER UNDERSTAND THE POEM

WE WENT TO AYO´S TO ENJOYABLY EAT PAELLA

I AM GOING TO TOTALLY PULVERISE HIM

WE ARE DETERMINED TO UTTERLY ERADICATE THE DISEASE

HE WANTS TO GRADUALLY GET RID OF PREJUDICES

THE POPULATION IS EXPECTED TO MORE THAN DOUBLE IN THE NEXT TEN YEARS

WE ALL WANT TO BOLDLY SPLIT INFINITIVES AT WILL

(famous Star Trek quotation) " TO BOLDLY GO WHERE NO MAN HAS GONE BEFORE"

 

TOO + Adj + To Infinitive =

TOO + Adjective + To Infinitive = Not+(opposite adjective)+ ENOUGH + To Infinitive

If I say "too young to marry and not too young to die" (by Joyce Carol Oates) could be rephrased as
"not old enough to marry"...
Rephrase the following statements in the above way:

 TOO YOUNG TO DIE

TOO BIG TO FAIL

TOO LAZY TO STUDY

TOO FAST TO CONTROL

TOO COLD OUTSIDE TO SIT

TOO INFORMED TO VOTE PP

TOO EXPENSIVE TO BUY

TOO SHY TO SPEAK

TOO DANGEROUS TO DRIVE

TOO WIDE TO CROSS

TOO OLD TO LEARN

TOO OBNOXIOUS TO USE

TOO NOISY TO LIVE IN

TOO SHORT TO PLAY BASKETBALL

TOO MEAN TO BUY IT

TOO INFLEXIBLE TO SQUAT

TOO STUPID TO PASS THE EXAM

TOO  EASY TO SOLVE

TOO WEAK TO LIFT THAT BOX

 TOO WILD TO TAME

TOO TALL TO SLEEP ON THAT BED

 

EURENGLISH

After Spanglish and Franglais, it´s now the turn of Eurenglish, which is the" unofficial"  language of the European Union, where there are twenty-four official languages  to accommodate the differences between member states.

Jeremy Gardner (no connection with Howard Gardner) has compiled an anthology of offenses committed in Eurenglish , called "A brief list of misused English terms in the E.U"
Eurenglish is an office dialect which relies upon words that do not exist or are relatively unknown to native English speakers.
The E.U. documents are written by civil servants for whom English is a second, third or fourth language.
Here´s an example:

"When the interoperability constituent is integrated into a Control-Command

and Signalling on board or Track-side Subsystem, if the missing functions,

interfaces, or performances do not allow to assess whether the subsystem

fully complies with the requirements of this TSI, only an Intermediate statement 

of Verification may be issued."

Find more examples of Eurenglish on the web or on official EU documents.
This information has been gleaned from The New Yorker July 29th 2013

Find 4 or 5 famous French...

In this activity you´ll have to try to find four or five important people from different countries in the world.I´ll give you a short list of countries and you´ll have to think of some people who represent that country.They may be living or dead.
In Europe: France, U.K. Belgium,Italy, Greece, Ireland, Germany, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, etc..
In America: U.S.A., Argentina, Brasil, Mexico, Chile, Venezuela,Cuba, Uruguay, Paraguay,etc..
In Africa: Morocco, Egypt, Libia, South Africa, Kenia,Algeria,etc.. 
In Asia: China, Japan,India, Vietnam, The Philippines,etc..

The most likely thing to happen is that after some research you come up with four or five male characters.
The task will get harder if you try to find five famous women from every country above-mentioned.

As a Spaniard and by way of an example let me give you a list and you´ll have to find out
WHO_ WHAT_WHEN_ WHERE_ WHY

CERVANTES

VELÁZQUEZ

GOYA

PICASSO

RAFAEL NADAL

Our culture is so pervasively male-dominated that it looks as if women had not contributed to our history, when in fact it´s the other way round.
Here´s the five famous Spanish women:

ISABEL LA CATÓLICA

TERESA DE JESÚS

AGUSTINA DE ARAGÓN

FERNÁN CABALLERO

MONTSERRAT CABALLÉ 

DO THIS PIECE OF RESEARCH RELATED TO OTHER COUNTRIES AND LET´S SEE YOUR RESULTS Instead of people, you can mention towns and cities, rivers, sights, famous monuments,etc..

 

YOU ARE...AMAZING

Each second we live is a new and unique moment of the universe, a moment that will never be again...

You are a marvel, there has never been another person like you..     (Pau Casals)

DID YOU KNOW THAT

Your heart beats over 100000 ( a hundred thousand) times a day?

Your eyes can provide you with more information than the best telescope?

Your lungs inhale over 2000000(million) litres of air every year?

Your hearing is so sensitive that we can distinguish between hundreds of thousands of different sounds?

Your brain is more complex than the most powerful computer?

Your nose can differentiate thousands of different smells?

 YOU HAVE THE CAPACITY FOR ANYTHING: YOU ARE A MARVEL...TRULY AMAZING....A WALKING TALKING BREATHING THINKING MIRACLE...(that´s what you are indeed)