En Relación a Drácula

Transilvania, Transilvania . . . ¿donde escuché este nombre? y ¿Vlad "el empalador"? . . De la novela Drácula algo más para ampliar nuestros conocimientos

Transilvania

Región en la parte central de Rumania. Delimitada al este y al sur por la cadena montañosa de Los Cárpatos. Se la asocia con los vampiros pero también es conocida por la belleza de su paisaje y su rica historia. El imperio Austro-Húngaro comienza a desintegrarse después de la primera guerra mundial. La mayoría rumana eligió a sus representantes y proclamaron su unión al reino de Rumania el primero de diciembre de 1918. La Proclamación de la Unión Alba Lulia fue adoptada por los diputados rumanos de Transilvania y apoyada un mes después por los votos de los diputados de Sajonia. En 1920 los aliados confirmaron la unión en el Tratado de Trianon. Hungría protestó la decisión ya que más de 1.600.000 húngaros vivían en la zona principalmente en la parte este de Transilvania y en el límite creado recientemente. En Agosto de 1940, en medio de la segunda guerra mundial, Hungría recuperó cerca del 40 por ciento de Transilvania por el Tratado de Viena, con la ayuda de Alemania e Italia. Sin embargo el territorio volvió a Rumania en 1945. Esta región tiene una población de 7.221.733 con una gran mayoría rumana (75,9 %). También existen comunidades húngaras (19,6 %), alemanas (0,7 %) y serbias (0,1 %). La población húngara forma una mayoría en Covasna y Harghita.

La palabra que faltaba: Drácula

Esa palabra nueva, difícil de recordar y de poco uso, puede ser memorizada más fácilmente haciendo oraciones, buscando ejemplos de su uso en diferente oraciones o usando sinónimos para relacionarlas.

Carafe   havoc   jagged   lofty   quiver   wince    ruddiness

. . . for I had to drink up all the water in my carafe, and was still thirsty.

Carafe: bottle, decanter.

Fifty years ago a series of great fires took place, which made terrible havoc on five separate occasions.

This latest decision will cause havoc in the tourist industry

Havoc: mayhem, disturbance.

Fear

De como observa el paisaje del lugar. De la velocidad con que viajan y de los malos caminos. De como observa a la gente del lugar

" . . . I shall never forget the last glimpse which I had of the inn yard and its crowd of picturesque figures, all crossing themselves, as they stood round the wide archway, with its background of rich foliage of oleander and orange trees in green tubs clustered in the centre of the yard.

Then our driver, whose wide linen drawers covered the whole front of the boxseat,--"gotza" they call them--cracked his big whip over his four small horses, which ran abreast, and we set off on our journey.

I soon lost sight and recollection of ghostly fears in the beauty of the scene as we drove along, although had I known the language, or rather languages, which my fellow-passengers were speaking, I might not have been able to throw them off so easily. Before us lay a green sloping land full of forests and woods, with here and there steep hills, crowned with clumps of trees or with farmhouses, the blank gable end to the road. There was everywhere a bewildering mass of fruit blossom--apple, plum, pear, cherry. And as we drove by I could see the green grass under the trees spangled with the fallen petals. In and out amongst these green hills of what they call here the "Mittel Land" ran the road, losing itself as it swept round the grassy curve, or was shut out by the straggling ends of pine woods, which here and there ran down the hillsides like tongues of flame. 

La Palabra que Faltaba: Drácula II

I had to drink up all the water in my carafe. 
- Carafe: botella. 

I had for breakfast more paprika, and a sort of porridge of maize flour.
– porridge: avena, papilla.

. . . egg-plant stuffed with forcemeat, a very excellent dish. 
– forcemeat: relleno de carne picada.

All day long we seemed to dawdle through a country which was full of beauty of every kind.
– dawdle: andar muy despacio, demorarse.

Sometimes we saw little towns or castles on the top of steep hills such as we see in old missals.
– missals: misal.

The women looked pretty, except when you got near them, but they were very clumsy about the waist.
– clumsy: torpe, desgarbado.

. . . most of them had big belts with a lot of strips of something fluttering from them like the dresses in a ballet, but of course there were petticoats under them. 
– fluttering: ondulando.
– petticoat: enaguas, combinación.

 They wore high boots, with their trousers tucked into them.
– tuck: meter, esconder.

They are very picturesque, but do not look prepossessing. 
– prepossessing: agradable, atractivo.

On the stage they would be set down at once as some old Oriental band of brigands.
– brigand: ladrón.

They are, however, I am told, very harmless and rather wanting in natural self-assertion.
- self-assertion: asertividad??
Asertividad: en el diccionario de la lengua española esta palabra no existe. Sin embargo en otro diccionario se la define como la capacidad de expresar nuestras ideas.

Bibliografía:
http://www.definicion.org/asertividad
http://lema.rae.es/drae/?val=Asertividad
http://thefreedictionary
http://translategoogle.com

Inglés con los clásicos. Gral Guemes 561, local 9. Tel. 0387-4249159/155723965. 4400 Salta. Argentina

Sketching Mark Twain´s biography

Mark Twain wrote numerous books, made speeches and established a local-color literature describing his time and region like nobody else…

When he was four, Twain's family moved to Hannibal, Missouri, a port town on the Mississippi River that inspired the fictional town of St. Petersburg in “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” and “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn”. Missouri was a slave state and young Twain became familiar with the institution of slavery, a theme he would later explore in his writing.

Twain headed west. Twain and his brother traveled more than two weeks on a stagecoach across the Great Plains and the Rocky Mountains, visiting the Mormon community in Salt Lake City. The experiences inspired “Roughing It” and provided material for “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County”. Twain's journey ended in the silver-mining town of Virginia City, Nevada, where he became a miner. Twain failed as a miner and worked at a Virginia City newspaper, the Territorial Enterprise. Here he first used his pen name.

His first success as a writer came when his humorous tall tale, "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County," was published in a New York weekly, The Saturday Press, on November 18, 1865.