Purim is celebrated annually according to the Hebrew calendar on the 14th day of the Hebrew month of Adar, the day following the victory of the Jews over their enemies. In cities that were protected by a surrounding wall at biblical era, including Shushan (Susa) and Jerusalem, Purim is celebrated on the 15th of the month, known as Shushan Purim. This year Purim takes place on March 21st. (and in Jerusalem: on March 22nd.).

Purim is characterized by public recitation of the Book of Esther, giving mutual gifts of food and drink, giving charity to the poor, and a celebratory meal; other customs include drinking wine, wearing of masks and costumes, and public celebration.As mentioned above, a festive meal called Seudat Purim is held, often with wine as the prominent beverage; consequently, drunkenness is not uncommon at this meal.

The jovial character of this feast is illustrated in the saying of the Talmud (Megilla 7b) stating that one should drink on Purim until he can no longer distinguish between the phrases, arur Haman (”Cursed is Haman”) and baruch Mordechai (”Blessed is Mordecai”).

In Hebrew these phrases have the same gematria (”numerical value”), and some rabbinical authorities have ruled that one should drink wine until he is unable to calculate these numerical values.

It’s interesting to note, that Madonna (yes, Madonna), who has become a follower of Jewish mysticism (Kabbalah) in recent years, has chosen to take the Hebrew name Esther. Esther plays one of the leading roles in story told in the Book of Esther and she was both smart and beautiful (and wife of the Persian king!).

“The Web’s Best-Kept Traffic Secret”

     – by Jim Edwards

(c) Jim Edwards – All Rights reserved
 =====================================

Did you realize that thousands of website operators use a simple technique to generate targeted visitors to their websites without paying a dime in advertising? It’s true.

In fact, the technique works so well that many of them don’t want you to discover how they get those thousands of website visitors and make so many sales on virtual “auto-
pilot.”

Their method?

Creating tightly focused articles other people publish in their ezines (online magazines and email newsletters) and post on their websites. This method rates so powerful that some even call it “the web’s best kept traffic secret.”

Now, you may ask, “Why would an ezine publisher or website owner publish my articles for their subscribers?”

The answer: Content!

Over a 100,000 ezines and newsletters operate on the web (along with millions of ebsites) covering everything from pets and cooking to investments and real estate. Many of them need tightly focused content and they simply can’t produce all of it themselves. Look at it this way… it’s the same reason newspapers use the Associated Press. Individual newspapers often can’t afford staff writers to cover every story, so they accept articles from outside their organization.

You can do the exact same thing for various ezines and websites catering to your niche audience!

You can get valuable publicity — exposure you often couldn’t even pay for if you wanted to — by providing valuable, content-rich articles in exchange for a byline and a link to your website (called a “resource box”)!

The following represent only a few of the enormous benefits of writing and distributing simple articles online:

** Attain “Expert” Status **

Let’s face it! In the eyes of virtually everyone who reads your articles you rank as the “expert” on the subject.

Just look at people who write newspaper columns. You may disagree with their viewpoints, but they still have an elevated status in your mind compared to the “average Joe” off the street.

** Pre-sell Website Visitors **

If your article appeals to a niche audience hungry for more information on a very focused subject, you actually pre-sell them better than any sales pitch. In their minds, you’ve already delivered content they really want so when they click over to your site you already have a “reputation” in their minds.

** Traffic Lasts Longer **

Even though the Internet changes very quickly, webmasters are usually very slow to  remove content from their sites. Once you get an article posted on another person’s website, you have an excellent chance of that article staying there for weeks, months, even years.

** Increase Links To Your Site **

In a recent search I found just a dozen of my articles posted on over 813 different websites! Not only do those postings bring me traffic, but they also help my search
engine positioning because of my increased “Link Popularity.”

** Builds Your Affiliate Base **

Fact: Affiliates always take the path of least resistance. If you provide excellent articles they can easily post on their sites or copy and paste into their ezines, your affiliates will promote you more often and more effectively compared to those who don’t give them tools. Plus, as you make more sales and publish articles, other people will see you providing excellent tools and will want to sign up as your affiliate so they can use them too!

** Build a Huge “Opt-In” Email List **

You can use articles to build up a huge list of subscribers by simply compiling several articles into a series and delivering them at preset intervals. Often called a “mini-course,” this technique allows you not only to prove to your subscribers that you deliver great
information, but enables you to capture their name and email adress so you can send them articles and special offers in the future (with their permission).

** Requires No Special Skills **

People often think they need to be a “writer” in order to publish articles, but that’s not true!

FACT: If you have a passion for a subject and can talk and explain things like you would to a friend over a cup of coffee, you can write articles people will love to read.

So if you operate a website selling virtually any type of product or service (whether your own or as an affiliate), publishing and promoting with articles should rank high on your
 list of traffic generation strategies. No other method of generating targeted traffic to your
website provides the quality, quantity and steadiness of traffic in such a simple, straightforward, and cost-effective manner.

—-

Jim Edwards is a syndicated newspaper columnist and the co-author of an amazing new ebook, “Turn Words Into Traffic,” that will teach you how to use free articles to quickly drive thousands of targeted visitors to your website or affiliate link!
Click=> http://hop.clickbank.net/?idiom/ezarticles

On March 21, 1948, the Governor General of Pakistan – Mohammed Ali Jinnah declared, that the Urdu language would be the only language for both West and East Pakistan. The peoples of the East Pakistan (whose main language was Bengali) started to protest against this decision.

On February 21, 1952, several students campaigning for the recognition of the Bengali language as one of the state languages of Pakistan were killed (shot) by the government police.

Linguistic and cultural diversity represent universal values that strengthen the unity and cohesion of societies. The recognition of the importance of linguistic diversity led to UNESCO’s decision in 1999, in the 30th session of its General Conference that the Organization would launch and observe an International Mother Language Day on 21 February every year, throughout the world.

This is mostly the international recognition of the Language Movement Day, which has been commemorated in Bangladesh (formerly: East Pakistan) since 1952.

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Sociolinguistics is the study of the effect of any and all aspects of society, including cultural norms, expectations, and context on the way language is used.

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Earlier indeed, I was only 50 years and 7 days old. What’s the deal? Why am I doomed to do the same thing over and over again? It wasn’t making any sense to me.   I decided to go to Amy’s and spill the beans. I can tell her what I do, she’s my best friend. It wouldn’t harm anyone if she knew what I’ve been doing for the last ten years. At least I’ll get her support and who knows maybe she’ll have a clue as to how to get out of it. I reached her coffee shop in 2 minutes. She greeted me warmly, but gave me a suspicious look.

How come you’re here on a Monday? Not used to seeing you on a week day.

Just wanted to chat with you. Listen, you know that I…..

Chat? About what? She turned her head shouting at her new waiter to hurry up; customers were waiting for their menu.

What were you saying? She frowned.

It’s about my job… work…what I do… I’ve never talked about it but I’m….

Don’t! I really don’t want to know!

Why not Amy; you’re my best friend?

I know, that’s exactly why! It’ll ruin our friendship!

Ruin it? That’s what friends are for, isn’t it?

No it is not.

What???

Friends are there for you to cry your heart out when your lover’s been cheating on you, your boss fired you, you haven’t paid your bills, or worst of all you can’t get into last year’s pair of jeans. Not for listening to your stuff! 

I couldn’t take it any more. I felt dizzy and held my head so the world would stop spinning around me. Seconds later, when the dizziness passed I was about to just say it – but couldn’t.  I was afraid of losing our “friendship” forever.

Because…. Amy began slowly.

Because what? I snapped!

You look so desperate you’ll expect me to save you.

So????

So that’s a little way over my head. I have enough on my hands as it is.

‘Nicole how many times do I have to tell you to clean the tables immediately after the customer leaves????? Can’t you see we are short of tables today? Use your head if you have one’, she added quietly. 

Feeling very strange and more so lonely, my occupation saga seemed even more unfit for me. I had a wild guess that Amy knew about my job, she just didn’t want to hear it said out loud. So what if my job is to distribute customers among all the cafés in the neighborhood? I walked out of Amy’s café which was gradually getting crowded (well I haven’t been idle all morning) and went back to my headquarters, where a long queue of impatient coffee addicts was waiting for my return from my coffee break. Can’t take it, the coffee, I’m a tea person myself.

  All languages make up new words as they go along. Sometimes it happens because our life style changes and we suddenly need new words. Brunch was invented because we weren’t hungry enough at breakfast but couldn’t wait till lunch. So we blended the two words. Linguistics call this process blending. Motel is also a blended word (motor+hotel). We bet blog (web+log) immediately came into your mind, didn’t it? 

When we are not blending, we sometimes combine two words together. It’s called compounding. There is almost no limit to the kinds of combinations of words that occur in English: boyfriend, rainbow, landlord; newborn, undergo and sailboat are only few examples. At times of greediness we even make up three compound words, such as mother-in-law (god bless her) and sergeant-at-arms.  

Shortage of time leads to shortcuts, a process known as clipping. We say gym instead of the longer gymnastics; gas instead of gasoline; bike (bicycles), pop (popular) and math is short for mathematics. 

Acronyms can be viewed as other type of shortcuts. They are words which derive from the initials of several words put together to create a new word. Radar (Radio detecting and ranging); Laser (Light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation); OPEC (Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries). 

How does the term “onomatopoeic words” sound to you? Too long? Hard to pronounce? Quite right! (let’s clip that one…) Anyway, it means words that imitate the sound of their meaning: cuckoo( Hebrew: Kukeeya – ????? ), bottle (Hebrew: Bukbook- ?????), boom, whisper (French: chuchoter) , splash, click, buzzer (Hebrew: zumzum – ????)  swoop, hiccup (Hebrew: sheehook – ?????) and the cat purrrrrrrs…. 

Can you guess what Fallopian tubes, boycott, July and August all have in common? They are all eponyms – words deriving from names of persons or places. A separate article will be dedicated to eponyms as there are many different types of them. 

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We wish to send our deepest condolences to the people in Pakistan and to Benazir Bhutto’s family.

May her soul rest in peace.

Often enough we find ourselves misunderstood even when the listener speaks the same language. At times words get in the way, and at other times we can’t find the right words to express ourselves.  

So even if we all speak the same language there is no guaranttee that we will succeed in delivering our true meaning to the other person.

What happens when we try to talk with someone who doesn’t speak our language? Are we doomed to continuous misunderstanding? Not necessarily, although it could (and more than often does) lead to misfortunate mistakes, funny at times but hurtful at others.

I remember my experience as a nine year old Israeli residing in England. My name was mispronounced and very often I was called Piano or Pernina or even Pina instead of Pnina.  When I was asked how I wanted my eggs at dinner, I didn’t understand why my grandfather who didn’t speak any Hebrew didn’t know what an “eye egg” was. For me it was so obvious but I could see him  smiling at my new language innovantion. I kept saying “eye egg” and wasn’t understood. How was I to know that the expression is “fried egg”? In Hebrew it’s called “eye egg” because the shape of a “fried egg” resembles that of the human eye. Well, at least that’s how Israelis see it… How was I to know that English people saw things differently? I even remember pointing to my eye again and again to emphasize the meaning…..

And why did my teacher correct my spelling when instead of “breakfast” I wrote breakfirst? For me it was clear: breakfirst was the first meal of the day therefore I heard break first…..

And how was I to know that a boyfriend is not a friendboy………. who cares for word order, the important thing is to have one!!!

Many times the first sentence you learn to say in a foreign language is: “I don’t speak English/Dutch/French”. I remember on my first day at school my teacher, Mr. Kaufman, wanted to give me something to read and I said “I don’t speak English”, he didn’t appreciate the fact that it was the only sentence in English I knew, even if it sounded as if it was coming out of a native English speaker… 

That reminds me of two highway workers who were busy working at a construction site when a big car with diplomatic license plate pulled up.
“Parlez-vous français?” the driver asks them. The two workers just stared.
“Sprechen Sie Deutsch?” The two continued to stare at him.
“Fala português?” Neither worker said anything.
“Parlate Italiano?” Still no response.
Finally, the man drives off in disgust.
One worker turned to the other and said, “Gee, maybe we should learn a
foreign language…”
“What for? That guy knew four of them and what good did it do him?” 

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