Originally posted by: her209
Originally posted by: bizmark
my last reply....
If you're immigrating to the U.S., you should have prepared for the journey. One, you should have learned at least a minimal amount of English. Two, you should have learned some things about religion, living arrangements, food, clothing, etc. If you did not, then you're an idiot and I'm surprised you made it here alive in the first place. You can't expect for anybody else to take responsibility for your own life. Going to another country where you don't speak the language, without any knowledge of the country whatsoever, is a very irresponsible thing to do, and you cannot expect the inhabitants of the country to make any effort to help you.
Thats contradictory to your proposal of keeping cultures/languages separate. I'm sorry, but most immigrants I know leave to escape war or poverty or persecution. I doubt any rich people persons of another nation were to come here unless they were targeted for something. Besides, most emigrating people don't have access to that type of information because if they did then most of the world wouldn't hate the U.S. so much. Take for example, can you tell me how people in say Sweden (hehehe) live day to day? What religions are practiced? What foods they consume? Please also note how you got that information...
God damn this place... I can't get away. Anyway, I don't see how that's contradictory. I'm saying, if a person is willing to immigrate, they'd better be damn aware of the choice that they're making when they do so. He is physically transplanting himself into a
foreign culture. A culture that is, in at least some ways, NOT like his own. That is not a decision to be taken lightly. I would choose to live in poverty in my own country rather than be a penniless outsider who can't communicate in a rich country. Yes, I'm saying this not just as an American, but as anyone. Damned if I'm going to just ditch my people, family, friends and run away to live in luxury (but really I wouldn't be living in luxury since I'd be an outcast in the new country).
It's not contradictory at all, and I clarified this in my earlier post. In a perfect world, would I stop immigration and the mixing of the world's cultures? Yes. But, given that immigration exists, any immigrant ought to be willing to do everything possible to make himself fit in in the new culture. You should not emigrate to another country and expect to maintain the culture of you homeland. If you wanted the culture of your homeland, you should have stayed there. The fact that you left shows that you like the new culture better than the old, so
get with it!
As for Sweden, this is all off the top of my head (no research), and I'm sure I'm probably wrong about some of the details, but at least I have *some* idea about things there. Religion: overwhelmingly Protestant Christian. Food: a lot more fish than we have here. Reindeer occasionally. Probably not as much beef or chicken as we eat in the U.S. Day to day life: probably much the same as here in the U.S., as Sweden is an industrialized nation and its residences, businesses etc. are undoubtedly similar to ours. People have jobs (mostly industrial or service jobs), they go to work 7 or 8 hours a day, their kids go to school daily, they drive cars or take public transportation, they mostly watch television for entertainment. Their government is socialist, so they get free healthcare and other benefits, but they're taxed very heavily (like 50%), so maybe they're a bit lazier on the job, I don't know. Computers, Internet, cell phones, all of these are common. They wear clothes much like ours, blue jeans, skirts, t-shirts, jackets, all of the common fashion basics in the Western world -- they probably look different but they're really not much different. (Although they undoubtedly wear heavier clothing than we do since it's a colder nation on the whole than the U.S., but heavy winter clothing is common in the U.S. too.) I really can't state where I got all of this information. I know that some of it came from history and geography classes in high school. Other has come from newspaper or magazine articles, random Internet things, common sense...? I've never been to Sweden, read a book or done a report on Sweden, or known or talked to a Swedish person.
If you were still in your home country but preparing to emigrate to the U.S.: As I said, salient cultural features are much easier to see if you're looking in from the outside. American culture for you will be defined by its differences from your own. Automobiles, ATMs, red stop lights, prevalence of television, light switches working a certain way, people walking a certain way on the sidewalk, the type of clothing that's appropriate to wear .... I could go on and on. Comparative cultural studies are much easier than positve cultural studies (i.e. starting from the ground up within a certain culture without comparing it to others). This type of knowledge is common, if somewhat prone to stereotypes. I can tell you a bit about how any major country differs culturally from the U.S. I think that most semi-educated citizens of any country could do the same.
Observation can never teach you fully about a culture. Sure it works with simple things like which side of the road to drive on, when to cross the street, and stuff like that, but that's such a small and insignifcant part of this American "culture". I mean, if I saw three families say Christians, Jewish, and Muslim... all three may have similarities but there are much more differences. And that's just three religions. And then there is this holidays thing. Can you tell me all the days that are celebrated in Spain? And the reasons why?
Of course you can never learn everything about a culture by simply observing it, but then, if you're not FROM a culture, can you ever fully understand it? I think that in some cultures there are probably subtleties that most foreigners can never grasp. Perversely, as I stated earlier, I think that people from a culture can never understand their own culture fully either. They FEEL it and interact with it, but they cannot fully grasp it or explain it.
You're right that there's much variation in American culture, but I disagree about the proportion of similarities and differences. I believe that the similarities are much greater than the differences in the three families. Some aspects of culture are even enforced by law in the U.S., e.g. rape laws. In some foreign cultures, marrying off daughters at a young age is common. Hell, it used to be common in our culture. Anyway, this is certainly a debatable point, and I don't think that it can ever be conclusively proven one way or the other, but I disagree with you.
As for Spain: I haven't a clue, but I'm sure I could find a nice book on Spain that would tell me all about it. Or, if I went to Spain, I could ask my neighbors, friends and co-workers, and they could explain the holidays to me.
Beyond this common knowledge, there are many books and the like that you can get in your own language telling you about the U.S. and how it differs from your own country.
Oh you mean like the Koran? I haven't seen any books that you speak of... besides, I thought the American culture was undefinable?
Look, go into the travel section of a large bookstore and you'll find plenty of books that will give you at least the basics on foreign cultures. What to wear to fit in, what language, how people interact... I could go on. And yes, I would definitely count on the Qur'an to give me insight into the culture of any predominantly Muslim country. Does it define the culture? Of course not. But does it have a significant impact, and I would be a large step closer to understanding the country's culture if I understood the Qur'an.
Yes, American culture is undefinable, but foreigners can be told some of the characteristics of it which differ from those of their home country. Many of these are linguistically tied. For example, some languages have two forms of 'you', formal and informal. English doesn't make those distinctions. This difference has implications for common social interactions like making purchases in a store, interacting with a superior in the workplace, or meeting somebody for the first time. No culture can be defined exactly by anyone, whether they're from within or without, but it can be experienced, and some of these experiences are easily turned into words.
Oh yeah, and the founding fore fathers built this country on the freedom of speech, expression, and religion.... but I guess you must have forgotten that.
I don't see the relevance of this statement. I'm not debating the right of any American to say whatever he wants, express whatever he wants, or worship whatever he wants. I am debating the right of a non-American to come to America and expect to be able to maintain his old culture while still being accepted as an American.