culture

The silent minority

America’s largest ethnic group has assimilated so well that people barely notice it

German-Americans are America’s largest single ethnic group (if you divide Hispanics into Mexican-Americans, Cuban-Americans, etc). Yet despite their numbers, they are barely visible. During the first world war, parts of America grew hysterically anti-German. Many stopped speaking German and anglicized their names. The second world war saw less anti-German hysteria, but Hitler and the Holocaust gave German-Americans more reasons to hide their origins.

Tags: culture, migration, historical, ethnicity, USA.

Source: www.economist.com

January 20, 2017 0

The languages the world is trying to learn, according to Duolingo

If you own a smartphone and are trying to learn a language, you probably have Duolingo. English is far and away the most dominant, with a caveat: For some learners, English is the only language Duolingo offers with translation into their native tongue. That doesn’t change the fact of universal interest in English, though, which Duolingo notes is studied by 53% of its users. Things get more interesting when you look at the second-most popular language by country. There French takes the lead, followed by Spanish, German, and Portuguese.

Tags: language, colonialism, technology, diffusion, culture, English.

Source: qz.com

Questions to Ponder: What role do colonial history and modern economics play in shaping this linguistic data? How does migration influence patterns in bilingualism? What is a lingua franca?

January 12, 2017 0

Mexico is home to world’s largest pyramid

No one knows who constructed this pyramid 2,300 years ago. Cortés missed it when he invaded the pyramid’s hometown in 1519 and it wasn’t rediscovered until 1910. Today it stands as the largest monument ever constructed.

Source: www.youtube.com

10 years ago, about 30 miles outside of Veracruz, Mexico, I see a hill completely covered in vegetation. I notice that the angle is rather uniform and that it appears to have distinct faces at right angles. It dawns on my that I’m staring at an archeological site that has not been excavated and the Indiana Jones explorer in me is immediately fascinated. Mexico is filled with sites of ancient civilizations that stir the imagination and this is one of those.

Tags: Mexico, indigenous, folk cultures, culture, tourism.

January 10, 2017 0

Funeral Customs Around the World

“A funeral is a ceremony marking an individual’s death. Funeral customs vary widely between culture, religion, and geographic area. These customs are based on the beliefs and traditions of our ancestors. Although there are a multitude of different rituals, there are also some that are practiced worldwide. These include burials, cremations, and spirit offerings.”

Source: rigea.maps.arcgis.com

This story map was created by one of my students, exploring some of the unusual funerary customs around the world.

Tag: cemetery, culture, StoryMap, worldwide.

January 2, 2017 0

Easiest Languages to Learn

“Learning another language is a good thing, but with only a small percentage of Americans, it seems most of us can never dream of achieving this common goal.”

Source: www.youtube.com

This video’s humor isn’t always classroom appropriate, but it conveys several important ideas about languages. First, languages that are part of the same language family are easier to learn (leading to more cultural diffusion among speakers). Second, not all languages are equally important on a global scale even if they are similar (some languages are ‘docked’ on this list). This list is specifically for English speakers:

Dutch
Frisian
Afrikaans
Esperanto
Norwegian
Swedish
Italian
French
Portuguese
Spanish

Tags: language, culture, diffusion.

January 1, 2017 0

Japan forces a harsh choice on children of migrant families

Born in Japan, Gursewak Singh considers himself Japanese. The government doesn’t. But it offers children like him a chance to stay – if their parents leave.

Gursewak’s parents, who are Sikhs, fled to Japan from India in the 1990s. For several years, they lived without visas under the radar of the authorities until they were put on a status known as “provisional release” in 2001. It means they can stay in Japan as long as their asylum application is under review. While there were almost 14,000 asylum cases under review at the end of 2015, Japan accepted only 27 refugees last year. The year before that, the number was 11.

The low acceptance rate stands in stark contrast to Europe, which has seen hundreds of thousands of refugees arrive from countries such as Iraq, Syria and Eritrea. In the first half of the year, European countries ruled on 495,000 asylum applications, approving more than 293,000.

Tags: culture, Sikh, declining population, population, migration, refugees, Japan, East Asia, .

Source: www.reuters.com

December 26, 2016 0

Why Eating Chinese Food on Christmas Is a Sacred Tradition for American Jews

“[Jews] will not go to Mile End on Christmas because [they] happened to feel like fried rice; they will go to proudly proclaim their Jewish-American identity. They may or may not enjoy General Tso’s Chicken, but if they are eating it on Christmas, their prime motivation is not the general’s sweet, spicy deliciousness, but rather the knowledge that they are doing something that in some adapted way reinforces their Jewishness.”

Tags: Judaism, culture, cultural norms, food, seasonal.

Source: www.tabletmag.com

December 24, 2016 0

Gullah Culture

“While Gullah was not originally a written language and has never had a governing authority or dictionary, linguistic scholars have found that the language is internally consistent and in some ways more efficient and expressive than standard English. Elements of the language have seeped into African-American Vernacular English across the country.”

For the first time in recent memory, the Charleston County School Board is discussing how to address the specific needs of Gullah and Geechee students, children of a culture whose linguistic origins trace back to the west coast of Africa via the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Some teachers have said the students’ way of speaking — whether in the heavily West African-influenced Gullah language or in the more Anglicized dialects sometimes known as Geechee — can present an obstacle to understanding in the classroom. Like many Lowcountry Gullah speakers of her generation, the current head of state for the Gullah/Geechee Nation carries painful memories of adults who taught her to hold her family’s way of speaking in contempt.

Tags: language, culture, race, education, historical.

Source: www.youtube.com

December 19, 2016 0

Italy’s Last Bastion of Catalan Language Struggles to Keep It Alive

The lingering use of Catalan in Alghero, Italy, is a reminder of how Mediterranean cultures have blended for centuries. But the language is fading there today.

In an age when people cling ever more tightly to national identity, the lingering use of Catalan in Alghero is a reminder of the ways Mediterranean cultures have blended for centuries, rendering identity a fluid thing. But while the traditional insularity of Alghero has helped to preserve Catalan, the language is struggling to survive, even here.

Tags: language, culture, Italy, Europe.

Source: www.nytimes.com

December 12, 2016 0