After having been learning English in Oxford for a while, our Advanced class have experienced several cultural differences, one of them, superstitions. Because it is Friday the 13th, the students in the Advanced class wrote about superstitions in their home country. All of them are very different from the ones here in the UK. Enjoy what these students have to say about scary, or sometimes funny, superstitions from around the world. Mari about Japan: If you cut your nails with clippers at night, you might lose an opportunity to meet your parents when they are dying. I used to cut my nails whenever I wanted but after hearing this superstition, it makes me hesitate although it is obviously just a lore. According to an article, it is believed that cutting tools such as clippers or scissors have spiritual power especially at night. ‘A gap’ which is made by those tools when it is used allows evil to enter the gap and bring on bad luck. Personally, I guess that this tradition started ages ago when people lived in houses which had thin wooden walls. A noise by clippers at night could have been a distraction from sleeping. They would have tried preventing this unacceptable behaviour using a spooky story. Saqar about Saudi Arabia: In the past, superstitions were common in Arabic culture. Nowadays, most people who are from Arabic countries do not believe these superstitions for many reasons. One of them is that a lot of Arabic people are religious. For example, in Islamic rules, there is no one who knows what will happen in the future accept God. Before Islamic times, there were a lot of superstitions that were believed in Arabic culture. For instance, if a person saw a black bird in the morning, he would have a … Read more