Loira ou Morena?

Ok, so before I start this discussion I just wanted to share with you that my university gave FREE subscriptions to the first 3,000 students who signed up for this one music thing. It's like... a site where you can download any mp3 you want legally (b/c my school was having a prob with students dling illegal mp3s on the school server), and there's no spyware or ads or any of that other garbage. Well I was amongst the first 3,000, so I've been downloading all sorts of crazy songs (I've downloaded 300 since yesterday...hahha). Oh yeah, and the speed is much faster, because you're not dling from other ppl. So if any of you want me to dl a song for you just let me know, but FYI, this is an american thing, developed for american students, so the variety of foreign music is rather limited, MUCH to my disappointment. In fact, it's almost useless to me because I really don't listen to any music in english (I do, but very seldomly).

And so in regards to that, there was some chyck who posted and said that, although Cheb Khaled is considered the King of Rai, she things Cheb Mami has better music. It was a long and interesting post. Soooooo on my new little program here where I get music for free, I dled like 30 of Cheb Mami's songs and I have to say that this music is FAR inferior to Cheb Khaled's. That chyck has gross taste.


SOOOOOOOO!!!!! With the title of this little blog here: Loira ou Morena????

In my Portuguese class we were discussing and describing hair colors, and when it came around to my prof, one of the students described her as having brown hair. My prof said that in Brasil she is considered to have blonde hair, and it wasn't until she got here that anyone ever said that she has brown hair. And it's true; shades of hair and how they are classified depends heavily on the region. In Brasil there are a lot of people with very dark hair, so someone with her hair color (I would classify her as having a light brown) is considered blonde. Here in the States where most people have some shade of light or medium brown, and all sorts of shades of blonde are not unusual, we are definitely more "picky" about what we consider blonde. We have "platinum", "golden blonde", dirty blonde", etc. In places where light hair is much more uncommon, if you have any shade that is lighter than X then you are considered blonde. Here, no.

I recall that when I was in France people always referred to me as 'blonde', and for those of you who know me, you know that I am not blonde. But I went to the south of France in a city where there are a lot of North African immigrants from countries such as Algeria and Morocco, and with them, along with mixed blood, most of the people in that city in France have very, very dark hair. So to see someone with hair as light as mine (comparatively), they classified me as blonde, because to them I was blonde.

But it's just interesting, you know? In a sociology class that I took in high school the teacher said that it has been realized that things that are more prevalent or that play more important roles in a culture have more words for those things. It is true. Hair color is just one example. Here where blonde is more prevalent we have all different names for all of the different shades, whereas if you have dark hair you have dark brown or black. In Brasil they have one word for "blonde" and a million other words to describe darker hair and different shades of skin tone, etc. Likewise, compare the northern US with the southern US. In Florida, for example, they have one word for 'snow', and that is "snow". In northern states, take Maine, for example, they have many words to describe the type of snow. Powder, slush, etc. depending on its consistency due to amount of water and temperature. And likewise, up in north north north north noooooorth Canada where it's all but arctic (and they do have people who live there, I watched a videotape on it), they have even more different words for snow (and I forget what they are), but it was crazy. Anyway, I just find that really interesting.

...But so that makes me wonder. Because when I studied Latin, I noticed that the Romans had many different words for "sex" or "making love". I mean many different words for it. Some of which were quite creative, if not somewhat poetic, for example "skirmishes of Venus". So does this mean that the Romans had a lot of sex???? Poor boys. I guess they were bending over quite a bit, huh?