Random Culture Thread

This forum is to learn about foreign cultures and habits, because language skills are not everything you need as a world citizen...

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Antea
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Re: Random Culture Thread

Postby Antea » 2019-03-19, 6:58

Is it celebrated in your country/region? Here Holi is very well known and is also celebrated (here we celebrate everything :partyhat: ). And I even think that sometimes it is celebrated more than once per year. In fact it’s like a musical festival were people dance and throw powder colour.

Image

By the way, today here is Father’s Day.

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Re: Random Culture Thread

Postby linguoboy » 2019-03-19, 14:47

Despite Chicago's large South Asian community, Holi isn't a big thing here. I think temples hold celebrations but it's not common for non-worshippers to attend them. There are no public celebrations that I know of and most non-Hindus couldn't tell you when the holiday is.

Diwali is a somewhat different story.
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Re: Random Culture Thread

Postby vijayjohn » 2019-03-22, 5:13

Holi seems to be mostly an Indian thing here also, and perhaps even more specifically North Indian even though it seems to have also been gaining some currency in South India lately (like other North Indian imports - Bollywood, qawwalis, North Indian food, North Indian Chinese food, etc.).

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Re: Random Culture Thread

Postby mōdgethanc » 2019-04-25, 8:41

vijayjohn wrote:Holi seems to be mostly an Indian thing here also, and perhaps even more specifically North Indian even though it seems to have also been gaining some currency in South India lately (like other North Indian imports - Bollywood, qawwalis, North Indian food, North Indian Chinese food, etc.).
wait what
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Re: Random Culture Thread

Postby vijayjohn » 2019-04-25, 12:37

Welcome back! :mrgreen:

India has...something that we call "Chinese food" there, although I'm not entirely sure why we call it that. Some of it seems to be a poor imitation of Chinese food (kind of like Americanized Chinese food), some of it doesn't seem even remotely Chinese. I think it's probably called Chinese because it was historically made and sold by the Chinese Indian community (i.e. by Indians of Chinese descent, the majority of which probably still lives in Kolkata). Probably most Chinese Indian cuisine is from North India, but that's not necessarily true of everything. If I'm not much mistaken, gobhi Manchurian and Hakka noodles are not from South India (maybe they're from Kolkata), but chili chicken apparently comes from Baghdadi Jews living in Kochi (despite the link on Wikipedia, it doesn't strike me as being all that similar to laziji). Almost no Jews live in India anymore, so maybe the Chinese Indian community started selling it instead.

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Re: Random Culture Thread

Postby Prowler » 2019-05-10, 17:28

Dunno if this is the right thread for this, but here goes:

Is it me or do people generally only think about the good things when it comes to Scandinavia and Japan? It's like a lot of people only see the positives in countries like Sweden, Japan, Norway and Denmark and aren't aware of their problems. People seem to view them as utopias, and if you point out something you don't like or problems with those countries people might even get upset at you. For some reason people think the fact "Nordics have money" means everything else is also OK there and that you'd be nuts not to want to move there. As for Japan, people know Japan as being a clean country with an orderly society and Japanese as very polite people. But aren't aware of darker aspects of Japanese society such as the xenophobia and the stress from overworking.

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Re: Random Culture Thread

Postby linguoboy » 2019-05-10, 17:33

IME, people here who admire Japan are also aware of its flaws. That's less true of Scandinavia. Those countries are widely viewed as utopian by progressives in this country and they're the most common exemplars mentioned when they talk about what they'd like to see the USA become.
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Re: Random Culture Thread

Postby vijayjohn » 2019-05-10, 17:50

People definitely seem to think of the Scandinavian countries as being a bit like utopias and Japan as extremely modern (even though in many ways, it also isn't). This is why I was kind of shocked to hear from my Swedish co-worker about how bad certain aspects of life in Sweden are, like how apparently her house (in Sweden) is right in the middle of a brewing gang turf war.

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Re: Random Culture Thread

Postby Prowler » 2019-05-10, 19:37

linguoboy wrote:IME, people here who admire Japan are also aware of its flaws. That's less true of Scandinavia. Those countries are widely viewed as utopian by progressives in this country and they're the most common exemplars mentioned when they talk about what they'd like to see the USA become.

Well, yeah, I'd say people are more likely to know about Japan's flaws, but on the other hand, most people have no idea about Japanese politics. Japanese politics don''t really make headlines outside of Japan except for maybe Korea or China whenever a nationalistic politician says something controversial. Some Europeans might know Shinzo Abe as Super Mario only and think he's a nice fellow... talk about not being advised to judge a book by its cover lol. And people outside of East and South East Asia don't really care or think much about WW2 when Japan comes to their mind.

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Re: Random Culture Thread

Postby linguoboy » 2019-05-10, 19:44

Prowler wrote:most people have no idea about Japanese politics.

FTFY.

Coverage of foreign politics is terrible in this country. As you say, it only makes the news when there's some kind of dust-up and it's presented with minimal background. I'm not sure the average USAmerican could even name all the Axis powers. They have some notion of what happened in the European theatre since we still love making movies about it, but all they know about the Pacific theatre is Pearl Harbor. So, yeah, the whole legacy of Japanese colonialism is something they're entirely ignorant of.
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Re: Random Culture Thread

Postby Prowler » 2019-05-12, 20:14

Tbh Japanese politics are mostly internal and aren't really affected by what goes on what we've been seeing in USA and Europe in the past few years. Japanese politics seem kind of boring and lacking in colourful characters. Plus, Japan is a country that, despite its massive worldwide cultural influence doesn't have much political influence outside of Japan, so it makes sense people generally won't know much about that side of Japan. Which kind of contributes to a lot of people only seeing the good side of Japan.

The worst I generally read/hear people say about Japan is when they talk about its stressful society.

And I'm surprised you say that. I've always had the sensation that Americans are alongside the English the people/nation with the biggest WW2 complex in the world. A lot of people from those two countries like to brag about winning the war, almost as if it was their own personal achievement. I do notice a lot of Americans, in particular, tend to forget about the contributions by the USSR, the UK and Canada. Honestly, I do feel like most of the world either forgets or is unaware that Canada was in WW2.

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Re: Random Culture Thread

Postby linguoboy » 2019-05-13, 16:40

Prowler wrote:And I'm surprised you say that. I've always had the sensation that Americans are alongside the English the people/nation with the biggest WW2 complex in the world. A lot of people from those two countries like to brag about winning the war, almost as if it was their own personal achievement. I do notice a lot of Americans, in particular, tend to forget about the contributions by the USSR, the UK and Canada. Honestly, I do feel like most of the world either forgets or is unaware that Canada was in WW2.

As Americans prove on a regular basis, you don't need to know much about something to brag about your contribution. "You'd all be speaking German if it wasn't for us!" is just a boast we've been taught to say whenever Europeans annoy us without any real understanding of what lies behind it.

I genuinely wonder how many USAmericans could state confidently that Russia and China were our allies in World War II. Our general ignorance of history means we typically project current conflicts much further back into the past than is warranted (e.g. "Jews and Muslims have always been fighting").
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Re: Random Culture Thread

Postby Prowler » 2019-05-13, 19:37

linguoboy wrote:
Prowler wrote:And I'm surprised you say that. I've always had the sensation that Americans are alongside the English the people/nation with the biggest WW2 complex in the world. A lot of people from those two countries like to brag about winning the war, almost as if it was their own personal achievement. I do notice a lot of Americans, in particular, tend to forget about the contributions by the USSR, the UK and Canada. Honestly, I do feel like most of the world either forgets or is unaware that Canada was in WW2.

As Americans prove on a regular basis, you don't need to know much about something to brag about your contribution. "You'd all be speaking German if it wasn't for us!" is just a boast we've been taught to say whenever Europeans annoy us without any real understanding of what lies behind it.

I genuinely wonder how many USAmericans could state confidently that Russia and China were our allies in World War II. Our general ignorance of history means we typically project current conflicts much further back into the past than is warranted (e.g. "Jews and Muslims have always been fighting").

It would be fine if Americans just stuck to taking credit for the Pacific theatre and for defeating Japan. But ignoring the fact that USSR did the most to kill German troops is just... although you could say that they wouldn't have done it without American financed weapons and tanks. But still, by the time the US troops landed in Normandy Germany wasn't exactly at the top of its game anymore.

Also, it's one thing if some Americans talk about liberating France or Italy, but the worst is when they forget that some countries were neutral in WW2 or that "Hitler would have gotten to them eventually because he did not respect the neutrality of countries like the Netherlands and Belgium".

A lot of people also conveniently ignore the fact that USA originally didn't seem to want to get involved in the war and only got into it after Pearl Harbour. If the Japanese had never done that crazy and stupid act... well maybe USA would have joined in eventually but certainly not at that time. After WW1 USA was already a pretty powerful country. Not THE superpower like after WW2, but it was already a big deal, so to speak. It had investments in Europe and probably cared what happened in Europe to some degree. SO they might have gotten involved in the war sooner or later. And an interesting scenario now: What if Nazi Germany and USA had made some sort of deal and became allies due to seeing an enemy in the USSR?

As for bragging about things without truly knowing what happened, I guess everyone is guilty of that to some degree. I've seen Portuguese people online writing things like "os Portugueses descobriram o mundo!". That doesn't even make ANY sense like wtf?

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Re: Random Culture Thread

Postby vijayjohn » 2019-05-14, 0:44

Prowler wrote:Honestly, I do feel like most of the world either forgets or is unaware that Canada was in WW2.

All kinds of countries were in WW2. Everyone forgets about them, too (let alone about how complex the dynamics regarding the war were in those countries).
As for bragging about things without truly knowing what happened, I guess everyone is guilty of that to some degree. I've seen Portuguese people online writing things like "os Portugueses descobriram o mundo!". That doesn't even make ANY sense like wtf?

Having grown up with "Columbus discovered the Americas!" I'm unfortunately not terribly surprised even though my ancestors are from part of this world that the Portuguese supposedly discovered.

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Re: Random Culture Thread

Postby Prowler » 2019-05-14, 2:02

Yes, very true. People mostly remember the main countries from both sides.A lot of people probably have no idea about the role countries like Romania and Bulgaria played, for example. Or what happened in Greece.

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Re: Random Culture Thread

Postby vijayjohn » 2019-05-18, 23:17

I myself barely have any idea. :-/

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Re: Random Culture Thread

Postby Prowler » 2019-06-09, 19:26

Honestly, I find most traditions boring and uninteresting. Just a relic of time. I look at folk music, traditional dresses, festivities etc. and all of that looks uninteresting to me. I still maintain the same opinion as an adult that I did when I was a kid. What entertains me are video games, anime, football, etc.

I feel like most cultural elements don't interest me. I'm not religious at all, I'm not a big food guy, I don't like partying, etc. I suppose it's interesting to look at some Japanese stuff in photos such as kimonos; but I bet if I was Japanese I'd not give a damn about them either.

No wonder we romanticise history a lot and always make certain events and people look much cooler in the media...

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Re: Random Culture Thread

Postby Bubulus » 2019-06-11, 20:08

mōdgethanc wrote:
vijayjohn wrote:Holi seems to be mostly an Indian thing here also, and perhaps even more specifically North Indian even though it seems to have also been gaining some currency in South India lately (like other North Indian imports - Bollywood, qawwalis, North Indian food, North Indian Chinese food, etc.).
wait what

vijayjohn wrote:India has...something that we call "Chinese food" there, although I'm not entirely sure why we call it that. Some of it seems to be a poor imitation of Chinese food (kind of like Americanized Chinese food), some of it doesn't seem even remotely Chinese. I think it's probably called Chinese because it was historically made and sold by the Chinese Indian community (i.e. by Indians of Chinese descent, the majority of which probably still lives in Kolkata). Probably most Chinese Indian cuisine is from North India, but that's not necessarily true of everything. If I'm not much mistaken, gobhi Manchurian and Hakka noodles are not from South India (maybe they're from Kolkata), but chili chicken apparently comes from Baghdadi Jews living in Kochi (despite the link on Wikipedia, it doesn't strike me as being all that similar to laziji). Almost no Jews live in India anymore, so maybe the Chinese Indian community started selling it instead.

Salvadoran Chinese food is also a thing that exists. I knew that Chinese food in North America was different before coming here, but you can imagine my dad's shock when one day he ordered some bittersweet pork, fried rice and won-ton and he saw no super-soft tiny bread was served with it. :lol: :lol: :lol:

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Re: Random Culture Thread

Postby linguoboy » 2019-06-11, 20:24

Ser wrote:Salvadoran Chinese food is also a thing that exists. I knew that Chinese food in North America was different before coming here, but you can imagine my dad's shock when one day he ordered some bittersweet pork, fried rice and won-ton and he saw no super-soft tiny bread was served with it. :lol: :lol: :lol:

Apparently Puerto Rican Chinese food is typically served with French fries? :shock:
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Re: Random Culture Thread

Postby vijayjohn » 2019-06-13, 1:20

I was surprised when my Lebanese friend told me they ate French fries at home (with Lebanese food). I guess none of that is much stranger than this, though.
Prowler wrote:I still maintain the same opinion as an adult that I did when I was a kid.

I'm not religious at all

I don't like partying

These parts are mostly true of me, too.

I'm still learning about music in general and possibly starting to appreciate how small the differences between certain types of music are. Modern American music, for example, seems to be pretty heavily grounded in the same American folk music that North Americans in general now look down on.


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