A World of New Words

A World of New Words

I’ve recently started learning German and have discovered a whole world of new words; words which do not have an English equivalent. This has led me to wonder how learning another language can help improve our ability to express our feelings, and maybe even make us more aware of those feelings in the first place.

For example, I’ve experienced weltschmerz for many years, but I never had a nice neat word for it until now. The literal translation of weltschmerz means ‘world-pain’, or world-weariness, and was coined by the German author, Jean Paul Richter. It’s the feeling ‘experienced by someone who understands that physical reality can never satisfy the demands of the mind’, or ‘the feeling of sadness when thinking about the evils of the world’. Upon discovering this word I felt a weight lifted from me; having a singular word has helped me accept that feeling and it seems easier to deal with now that I have a label for it in my mind and it’s not just some intangible experience.

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Author Interview with Andrew Lamb

Hi Andy, first of all, could you tell us a bit about yourself?

I live in England with my fabulous wife and for a living I smash up cars in an attempt to make them safer (basically, I design the bits on your car which are meant to bend when someone drives into you).

At night, I become an Imaginaut and I write. I love reading and writing horror, science fiction and fantasy stories. I am also a complete super geek; I have a line-to-line photographic memory when it comes to a surprising number of horror and science fiction movies. Seriously, send me a line and chances are I’ll be able to tell you who said it and in what movie!

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Author Interview with Glenn Clay

Q: Hi Glenn Clay, first of all, could you tell us a bit about yourself?

A: Well I am a 24 year old guy. I am a graduate of Teays Valley High School and I live in a small town in Ohio.

Q: Why did you start writing?

A: I started writing as a newsletter writer for my small town but then it turned into a way to relieve my depression after I lost a very close loved one. 

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Author Interview with Ellen Ekstrom

Hi Ellen, first of all, could you tell us a bit about yourself?
I've been writing since I could hold a pencil and that's been a long time.  Presently, I work as a legal secretary to pay the bills and I'm also a clergywoman in the Episcopal Church for the Diocese of California - I serve as the parish deacon in my neighborhood church and undertake a lot of outreach to the community, which is middle-to-poor working class. I'm a native of the San Francisco Bay Area and live in Berkeley. I was influenced to write by an older sister who told me to put my imagination to work and to stop bothering her.  I started writing five-page novels complete with illustrations and sold them for a dime to our neighbors.  Once in a while, I sleep.  Early morning I wake and usually get an idea for a story.

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The Lone Ranger - Movie Review

A few years ago a group of people gathered to turn a theme park ride into a movie. The movie turned out to be a huge success and made Johnny Depp into the highest paid actor in history. Now the same team returned and try to achieve the same with a typical western story… and they failed in earning their budget back, resulting in the second biggest flop for Disney in recent years, right after John Carter. Is it justified? No, because at least for me it was one of the better films of this year, ranking somewhere in the top 3. Also it seems that the movies does better outside the USA.

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Life of Pi - Movie Review

Life of Pi is the unusual combine of visual stunning effects and an inspirational storytelling, instead of the well known action blockbuster. Ang Lee takes the viewers with him to the high sea, on a travel full of wonders and magic. It’s a movie that asks more question than it answers. It’s a movie that doesn’t tell you anything, but instead shows a how colorful the world could be. The question is, is this journey entertaining?

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