Happiness and prosperity to you in 2014 from Mr Lucky 999999

Bernardo (the fatter one) and friend send out their positive vibes.

Hello, I hope the new year has been treating you kindly so far, and that the kindness will increase as the year goes on. One thing I discovered over the holiday period is that THIS BLOG IS MUCH MUCH MORE POPULAR than I had thought. Although my official WordPress statistics tell me it has had 9900-plus views, I recently found out this was not the case. Far from it. After I had uploaded the previous post I called it up on the Twitter and Facebook feeds to check that it had turned out OK. And guess what? There was an advert on one of them saying CONGRATULATIONS! YOU ARE THE 999,999th VISITOR TO THIS SITE. THIS IS NOT A JOKE! Wow! So from now on I am just going to add a couple of zeros, no nines actually, to my readership figures, OK? I presume one of you got to be the lucky 1,000,000th visitor.

So, let’s start off the year 2014 with positive vibes, even if it is in the company of advertisers who seriously do not like to tell jokes.

Does my bum look fat in this? How about a leopardskin one instead?

In French, luck is la chance, to wish someone good luck you say bonne chance, and to bring someone good luck is porter bonheur à quelqu’un, (bonheur being happiness). So now I am channelling the African witchdoctor in me and doing an exuberant African-Australian-Irish tribal voodoo dance – wearing a leopardskin kilt haha – while playing the The Essential Noiseworks at full blast (the neighbours are giving me most peculiar looks) in order to porter you some bonheur this year. Shut your eyes and try to feel the vibes coming your way. Now you have to exclaim, C’est mon jour de chance! It’s my lucky day!

In Portuguese, boa sorte! is good luck! Happiness is felicidade or alegria, prosperity is prosperidade, as is próspero, which can also be an adjective, hence um próspero ano novo! A happy new year!

In Spanish, luck is suerte, and if you say it exuberantly with a verbal exclamation mark it becomes suerte! Good luck! Hoy podrías estar de suerte = this could be your lucky day. And a lucky break is golpe de suerte. Gosh, so many Spanish blessings! The words for happiness are, of course, similar to the Portuguese: felicidad, alegría.

In Italian, luck is fortuna or sorte and to wish someone good luck, you say buona fortuna! A lucky break is colpo di fortuna, and lucky you! or you lucky thing! is beato te! Happiness is felicità. Buon anno! (Happy new year.)

Last but not least, in Romanian luck is noroc, and to wish someone the best of luck you say mult noroc! To be lucky is a fi norocos (norocoasă in the feminine form). Happiness is fericire. Luckily is din fericire.

One of the books I picked up in Romania last year was Ghid de conversaţie Român-Englez pentru toţi (Guide to Romanian-English conversation for all) by Maxim Popp, who was born in 1912, so it can be a little quaint, even though this edition was published last year by Niculescu, which works in partnership with Oxford University Press. So I could leave you with Popp’s simple blessing – Toate urările de bine pentru noul an! (All good wishes for the new year) – or a more formal, complicated one: Fie ca noul an să-ţi aducă numai bine fericire şi succese în toate proiectele tale! Beau in sănătatea ta! (May the new year bring everything good to you, happiness and success in all  you do! I’m drinking to your health!)

That last sentence is persuasive, I’ll go for the latter: Fie ca noul an să-ţi aducă numai bine fericire şi succese în toate proiectele tale! Beau in sănătatea ta!

OK, the language lesson is over. Now turn up the volume and do a happy voodoo dance of your own to my favourite Noiseworks track, Touch (“Reach out and touch somebody”). Make sure you do that in 2014. Spiritually, I mean. No groping 🙂