Colours of rainbow

On the 23rd of February we had a lesson with Karen about Language and identity.
First she spoke about the typicals of Danish language. Then we had to create our own language portrait.
The colours are symbolise my relations with languages in different ways. You can see it below:

• Red: this colour shows my mother languge: the Hungarian language (HEART). It's a quite complicate language and unique as well. Most of the time I thinking this complicated way (HEAD) and I use (a completely coloured ARM) this language in Hungary.
• Blue: this colour symbolise the English language. This is the only language - exept Hungarian - I can speak. If I go to abroad I always use (ARM) this language. I really like it (little peace of my HEART), because it's an easy language and if I use it everybody all of the world understand me and vica versa. The last couple of years I was in England, so I started to think (HEAD) in English way.
  
• Brown: this colour shows the Danish language, which is very difficult for me so I will use my basic knowledge only during my staying (one of the SHOES).
• Black: this colour symbolise the German language, which belongs to my root, but I really don't like the sound of this language, so I don't think I will ever learn it (one part of my LEG).
• Beige: this colour shows the Latin language. I used to study it and I would like to recall my knowledge, because every language has latine root (grammar, vocabulary), and it's really usefull (one small part of my LEG) to be familiar with it.
• Yellow: this colour symbolise the Spanish language, which I started to study in secondary school on my own. But I had to finish, because to study English was much more important. I really like to know this language (the other pair of SHOES - this is the farest point of my body from my head).

After we drew our portrait we were divided to groups and we had to presented it for each other.
It was really exciting to see the way my mates made their drawings. It was also a very new experince for myself, because I had never thought about my relations to language before, because everybody speaks all the time, so having an own language or a foreign-language seem to be so natural.
We had to pick out one of the colours from our portrait and create a poem by a template, but I didn't like it at all, because I'm not really good at writing poems.
I prefer the following task, which was about the symbols of colours. We were diveded to groups again and we had to associate with each of the these colours:

• Blue: sea, peace...
• Green: nature, forest, hope, grass...
• White: virgin, clean, emptyness...
• Black: night, death, elegance, war...
• Gray: mist, typical, rutine, war...
• Red: love, blood, rose, passion, fire...
• Rosy: baby, tea, girlish...
• Yellow: sun, light, holiday, sand...

After this we discussed the answers of the different groups and it was amazing for me, because even we are from very different countries, we had nearly the same ideas.
We stayed in groups and the next task was about to collect proverbs from our countries, which also contains colours. In Hungary we have the following "colourful" expressions:

• Yellow: jealousy: yellow with jealousy
• Green: envy: green with envy
• Black humour: making jokes about sad things
• Black work: uncleared work
• Black sheep: somebody who very different from the others in negative ways
• Pink clouds: when somebody in love and see the world very positive, we use this expression: You surrounded by pink clouds.
• Pink glasses: the same explanation like above; the expression is: You watch the world through the pink glasses.
• White wall: when somebody's face becomes anaemic, we use this expression: You look like a white wall.
• Throw a yellow: in slang it means somebody go to pi

After all - in the following task - we had to complete some expressions with the appropriate colour:

• undeclared work - black work (in many languages use the black colour, but in English the right expression is: moonlight work)
• when you are almost frightened to death - white with fear
• church wedding - white wedding
• when you make jokes out of tragic things - black humour
• the illegal market - black market
• when you are very angry about something - red with anger
• when you describe a situation much more positive than it really is you paint rosy

I found this subject really interesting and useful. I had never dealed with language before that much like this lesson. Karen had a sentence at the beginning: " when you're in abroad you suddenly start to see your own culture from distance". I realised I had to come to Denmark to appriciate my own language, my culture. Language not just for talking, it also "tells" a lot about the country you belong to.