lol, you know what a bangle is? It's a chudi. Those colourful bangles that Indian women wear, those made of glass? They are the sign of the women's suhag...aka marraige....a widow or an unmarried woman would not wear the glass bangles or put sindoor, which is the red tika on the forehead.
Fascinating! I guess there's a lot that I should probably learn if I'm going to live there some day. :redface:
I'm a Gael. Not an ethnic Gael like every Scot or Irishman, and a third of Americans and almost half of Canadians, but a native speaker. Still, we're in the middle of the Gaelic Renaissance, so I can't complain (and I wouldn't anyway). It isn't here. I've been interested for a while in how widespread that is.
That is seriously awesome. I'm American (which seems to make the object of most of the board's unfocused nationalistic ire, but hey, what can ya do?) but if I could speak any language but my native English, it would be Gaelic. Probably Irish Gaelic rather than Scottish but still ,they are at least somewhat related I hear And I would hesitate to name one-third of Americans ethnically Gaelic. A more accurate saying would be: "One-third of us Americans WISH we were ethnically Gaelic." The Plastic Paddy phenomenon is truly alive and well in the good ol' U S of A.
A third of Americans are ethnic Gaels - thirty million 'Scottish' Gaels, and eighty million 'Irish' Gaels (the two are ethnically similar, so I count them as one race). I think those might be the worldwide figures though, but I'm not sure I speak both - the basics are similar, but the more complex you go the more different they get. And both have a fair amount of dialects.
Not trying to turn this into a political discussion, but are you serious? 'Western culture' doesn't exist. It's a phrase invented by Americans to rally support for the Cold War, and makes absolutely no sense if you think about it. And the west has its own intolerance, inequalities, and things that are considered evil to deal with before we can take 'enlightenment' to cultures that are far older than ours and far ahead of us as far as technology and legal systems are concerned. By even thinking that we are superior, the west is probably more intolerant than any other 'culture' on earth.
This thread is to share unique and interesting aspects of our separate cultures, NOT to debate the merits of one culture over another or to argue politics.
to what I' saw last year, Egypt is doing good.....one of the students of the school I went to told me that Islam doesn't allow for a guy and a girl to even shake hand....but the school I went to was coed...so he told me, that the girls and guys were friends anyways, and even though he agrees with most aspects of his religion, there are certain he chooses to ignore, because he wants to move on with time, but within limit. I agree on that opinion...the kewords being within limit.
