Sunday, April 9, 2023

It's Spring!

We're just past the Equinox.  It's also Easter, Passover and the middle of Ramadan.  Ramadan happens to be in the early springtime this year but begins on various dates, moving earlier on the calendar by about 11 days annually.

This got me thinking about how best to teach vocabulary centered around not just spring, but renewal. In English, we take for granted all the vernal idioms to symbolize rebirth, renewal, revival and so on.  Greening, budding, springing up, sprouting, flowering, the sowing of seeds and so on can be applied to ideas as well as to plants.  

But not all countries have the four seasons we're used to.  Some tropical locations close to the equator have a rainy season and a dry season, instead, caused not just by the earth's tilt but by the annual shifting of the winds in response to the rotation and pitch.  

I'm sure those indigenous languages have terms for those, two seasons rather than our four.  And I'm sure they have different but equally colorful idioms relating the two seasons to human endeavors.

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