All the recent events over in Crimea put me in a somber mood, my thoughts turning to that strange old aristocrat Lord Alfred Tennyson and his poem The Charge of the Light Brigade about pointless and foolish deaths on that peninsula 150 years ago. Although thousands of soldiers from Russia and Britain suffered horribly, the Treaty of Paris at the end of that war lead … Continue reading WOTD: Baraj
I’m always out there looking for words in Romanian that you can’t easily find in the dictionary or that the online translation websites aren’t smart enough to handle. Today’s word is purici (poo-reetch), which under ordinary circumstances just means “fleas”, as in the jumping, biting insects that sometimes infest mammals. Etymologically the only related word in English is pruritis, the “fancy” medical term used for … Continue reading WOTD: Purici
Ever since I read The Brass Check on my first e-reader about 10 years ago (yep), I’ve been fascinated by which news stories that people who are hyper-aware of the media know about and which stories seem to drift into the general population’s consciousness, as if my magic osmosis. Last night I was doing yet another interview (nothing new or original was discussed) and the … Continue reading Akum noi toti govarim pa romaneste
If you’re like me and you’re trying to learn Romanian by watching the news, you can sometimes get stymied by the (seemingly) hundreds of acronyms that the media uses here. For the past week or so I’ve been keeping a list of the ones I’ve seen. For your own elucidation, here they are in alphabetical order: ANAF – The government agency in charge of collecting … Continue reading Media Acronyms
I’ve realized over the years that I keep writing about gypsies, a race of people that few “outsiders” ever want to bother to understand. The gypsies are just there, usually bothersome, and the most compassionate outsiders just want them to “integrate” and be like everyone else. One of the reasons they won’t “be like everyone else” is precisely because they have so many of their … Continue reading Word of the Day: Stabor
All Things Romania 