Why Black Friday is Stupid in Russia

Ok, it's stupid not only in Russia, but in Europe, Asia or anywhere else except the United States.

I'm really getting tired of seeing Black Friday sales here in Moscow. There has already been one at Mvideo, a popular electronics store, on Halloween, and now there's a Black Friday sale there again that has been extended till December 9. I've asked my students and other Russians I know what they think Black Friday means, and they tell me it's just another word for discounts and sales. Some of them know that the tradition comes from America, but few of them have ever even heard of Thanksgiving.

This post will be interesting to those of you who are studying English but don't live in the U.S. I'm going to clear up what it all means, and you will finally understand how stupid it is to have Black Friday sales abroad.

Thanksgiving is a holiday that falls between Halloween and Christmas. It's an important holiday in America. According to the story that we all learn in kindergarten, the Pilgrims were bullied because of their religious beliefs and decided to settle in America. Problem was, they didn't know how to grow food and were starving to death because they couldn't feed themselves. The Indians, or native Americans if you want to be politically correct, saved them by teaching them how to grow corn, hunt for wild turkeys, and how to make pumpkin pie. They were so happy that they had a big feast. This of course happened before we started killing them and stealing their land.

Nice feast, but the Indians probably weren't invited

This probably wasn't true, but that's the story. Supposedly, they did have a feast, but it is doubtful that the Indians were invited, even though they helped them.  Another interesting historical fact is that the first question that the Indians asked the Pilgrims was if they had any beer. The Indians knew about beer because some sailors who had come before the Pilgrims had traded them alcohol, which the Indians didn't have, for their jewelry and stuff.

Anyway, none of that is really important. What is important is that on Thanksgiving day Americans get together and pig out on turkey and pumpkin pie. It's a day for eating and stuffing yourself. It falls on the last Thursday of November.  Since it's always on Thursday,  the next day, Friday, is also a day off. Before I came to Russia, in 1997, I don't remember doing anything else on this day but recovering after eating too much turkey. However, somewhere in the mid 2000s Black Friday became super popular. You see, stores make all their money for the Christmas shopping season. It's called Black because before that the stores are "in the red" meaning they still haven't made any profit, and after the Friday following Thanksgiving they are finally "in the black". It doesn't really have any connection with the crowds, madness and deaths that sometimes happen, which is what many people think.

Why is it so crazy? Well, the thing is that the big stores like Walmart like to get as many people to come as they can. They know that on the Friday after Thanksgiving people aren't working and are bored because all they are doing is sitting at home eating leftover turkey. So what they do is take a popular expensive item like big screen TVs, which normally cost say $1000, and they sell them for something stupidly cheap like $300. They actually lose money on the item, but that's okay because there aren't that many of them for sale. It's first come first serve. So since supply is limited and people know about that because of all the hype, they camp out in front of the store and stand in a huge line all night long. When the doors open, they all stampede in, running like crazy. There have been a couple of cases where people have actually died because of getting stepped on by all the other people who only care about getting cheap big screen TVs.

If you want to see how crazy it is, check out this video. If you want to see more, use the key words "Black Friday" plus "fights, crowds, or madness".

Of course, in Europe and Russia, they see how much money these stores are making and they want to copy the U.S. They don't care about how crazy or violent these sales are, they just want to make money. I think it's greedy and stupid. You can't have Black Friday unless you have a holiday like Thanksgiving where the next day is a day off. It just doesn't work.  

20 words a day

This is a new challenge I've set for myself in the languages I'm currently studying, French and Dutch. I'm recommending it for my English students as well. One of the biggest obstacles to learning a language is vocabulary, not only at the beginning, but later as well. If you only study what you learn at school and from textbooks, you will never learn real English. For speaking, it's possible to get by with only knowing about 3000 or so words. You can even get by just using 1000 if you're creative. However, you won't be able to make any progress in reading unless you know from 8000 - 10,000 words. Of course you will be able to get the general idea with fewer words, but it's still better to work on increasing our vocabulary and make it part of our daily practice.

Most students don't actively seek out and try to find new words, however. Why? Probably, just laziness and procrastination. Most students just do what the teacher gives them as homework. Others watch YouTube videos and read random articles, but don't look any words up. Of course, if you read and watch videos a lot, you will learn and pick up words from context. There is a whole methodology around this, which is known as extensive reading. It works, but you need to read and watch a lot for it to work. Actively looking for new words and trying to learn them sometimes is the most effective way to increase your vocabulary.

Why 20 words? It's a reasonable number of words to learn in a day. It usually takes less than 30 minutes to do. If you do it every day, you will know more than 7000 words at the end of the year.

What I do is find an article that I'm interested in. That's important. Don't try to make yourself read something you don't like. I prefer articles about popular psychology and motivation. These include a lot of everyday vocabulary that is useful to learn. Another interesting place to find words are on lists. You can google things like "100 things to do when  you are bored" or look up bucket lists. Lists are fun because they also include useful words and expressions and they aren't difficult to read.

When I find something I don't understand, I first look it up by using google translate and then I find the dictionary in a monolingual dictionary. Wiktionary is good for this. If you are trying to find out what a word means in English you can also find the definition by typing "definition: word" in Google.

Keep in mind that sometimes it's not just a word that you don't understand, but the phrase as a whole that operates as one unit. For example, the expression "every now and then" means "sometimes". Many students get confused because they understand each word on its own, but can't understand what the expression means because they are translating each word one by one into their own language and it doesn't make sense. This is one of the reasons why it is bad to translate in your head. However, even if you aren't doing this, these kinds of expressions can still be confusing. Google Translate, however, is getting better and better at translating these kinds of idiomatic phrases correctly.

 One I find the words, I write them down as a numbered list in Evernote. I sometimes also use Trello. You can use whatever note program you want, or keep a separate journal if you like writing things down by hand. I usually just write the word and sometimes a sentence or phrase using the word. I don't write the translation because the next day, I will review the list I wrote from the previous day. If I have forgotten some of the words, I will look them up again. It helps me to train my memory and figure out what words are giving me problems. If I still can't remember I don't worry about it too much. At a later date I can always make flashcards.

The important thing is to keep at it and do it every day. I don't follow my own advice, but I'm trying to improve. The hardest thing is to remember to do it. One thing that helps is to make it into a routine. Do it while your drinking coffee in the morning for example or while relaxing in the evening before going to bed. Let me know how it goes!

Useful Resources for Learning English

Google Translate: probably the most useful site ever for learning new words and expressions when reading English material on the web. It's true that the translations are often bad, but it's getting better and better. Remember that if you can't understand an individual words, you might need to translate the whole phrase or sentence. For example, in the expression "every now and then" you may understand every word individually but together it means "from time to time". If you use chrome, there is a very useful extension that you can download that can automatically translate words or phrases that you highlight.

Reverso Context: http://context.reverso.net/translation/ It's really important for learning new words to understand how they work in sentences. Context is very important for both remembering the words and how to use them. If you just try to memorize a word and its translation, you are wasting your time. Before the Internet, it was really hard to find good contexts. You would learn a new words and hope that you would meet it later somewhere in a book or newspaper article. Now you can easily find the words used in context. In addition to using Reverso Context, you can also try googling the word or expression and also use google image and YouTube. Imagine you're on a wild safari and that the words and expressions are wild animals, and you're meeting them in their natural habitat. The important thing is to have fun and enjoy learning new words!

Forvo: https://forvo.com/ is a useful site for learning how to pronounce words in English, or any other language, properly. All the words are pronounced by real native speakers. If you register, you can also request somebody to pronounce something if you don't find it on the site.

Flashcards Deluxe: This is an app for either iOS or Android. It's not free, but it is the best one I have found. There are other free apps that do the same thing that you can try out if you don't want to spend money. You can also do it the old-fashioned way and make physical cards. Flashcards are the best way to learn lots of vocabulary fast. The best way is to write on one side the word, and under it the sentence using the word. You can use either the sentence from what you are reading, or a sentence from Reverso Context. The important thing is that it is a good sentence that lets you guess what the word means. On the back, you can write either the translation, or a definition in English. Don't forget to write a sentence down using the word, that is the most important thing. Learning words without context is a big waste of time!

LingQ: https://www.lingq.com This is a very useful site for learning languages. It has a huge library of texts in English. At first all the words are highlighted blue, meaning they are unknown. You click on the words that you know and they get turned into lingqs, which are what they call flashcards, that you can review later. In addition, all the texts have audio, so you can listen to them as well. The only bad thing about the site is that you only get to make 20 lingqs for the free account.

English Geek

I'm in the process of creating a new blog, English Geek, on top of an old blog, Fun English Moscow. As you can see, it's been a very long time since I've written anything at all. I could say it's because I've been very busy and haven't had any time, but that would be a lie. The real reason is that I'm a helpless procrastinator and have just been putting this project off. Now, however, there have been some real changes in my life. I've decided to quit teaching at school and put my energy into freelancing and group lessons. I also want to spend more time creating materials and sharing useful information with other language learners. That's the main reason for starting this blog again.