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Here’s a thread to talk about culture! I’ve always wanted to have/make a thread like this since CB is made up of so many different backgrounds and cultures. Anyways, you can discuss traditions, food, places, languages, just rant, etc. anything about culture. Make sure to keep comments respectful of all backgrounds, and if you have questions about specific cultures or in general, make sure they are polite.
Have fun! 🙂
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Ooh, what a good idea for a thread! In my neighbourhood there’s quite a large Sikh population, and every May there’s a big Sikh parade! Even though my family isn’t Sikh, we still like going to it because it’s kind of like being completely immersed in the culture: the music, the language, the clothes, the FOOD (yum). It’s so cool!
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Ooh, this is right up my alley! So prepare for a long post with various elements of different cultures I am interested in:
For starters, Indian classical music (India the country, not the colloquial/pejorative term for Native Americans [why, Colombus? why?]). I really enjoy hearing ragas (Indian classical musical forms on the sitar or other instruments), and I’m learning the sitar myself after finding a really good deal on a sitar (just $100 plus tax for a secondhand sitar from a good brand that just needs restringing but is otherwise great) on a music website which I will not say the name of for fear of being zapped. I don’t have a teacher but I do have a book by the late Ravi Shankar, one of the world’s formost sitar players, which includes a manual on how to play the sitar, and the basics of ragas and such. Since I am a musician, I enjoy learning abuot musical traditions from other parts of the world.
And languages! I really like learning different langauges; right now I am on Russian (my grandmother’s native language is Russian and Latvian because she grew up in the former Latvian SSR, and it is the language that she speaks best so I am learning to communicate with her in the language). I am getting pretty good at that and I am even creating my own language learning app! I learn anything I can get my hands on: I know English, Hebrew, French, and Russian pretty well, as well as a good level of Spanish, and some rudimentary Vietnamese (Xin chào!) and German (Hallo). My next languages will be Hindi and Latvian; I know some Hindi (Namaste) but not enough to my level in Vietnamese or German.
I also like learning about my own cultures, like Latvian; thanks to that new movie Flow Latvia’s film industry is booming, and I also think they did a great job at Eurovision even though they didn’t win; however, I do not like a lot of the public sentiment around the country; like once I was watching a video about Latvia from this person that makes one video covering every UN-recognised country and geography and such, and he was talking about how Latvia is “swampy” (no, it is foresty, not swampy) and creepy emo/such (mostly because of Karosta prison, a former Soviet prison that was turned into a hotel where you can pay to be treated like a prisoner of war). I also really liked watching Flow and I would recommend it; it is a movie with no words (so it is really easy to dub it into any language, you just need to translate the title) about a cat whose home is flooded and takes shelter on a boat, joined by a capybara, a lemur, a dog, and a secretary bird (in that order), and it explores the dynamics between them, and the environment around them collapsing; it’s mainly a movie about the fragility of the environment and the importance of friendship. There are no humans in the movie either.
Also, there is this really interesting tool by Google that generates a fusion recipe from two countries’ cuisines (I won’t say which, but if you want look up “google ai fusion food”). I haven’t made any of them, but they look really good. I like cooking different cuisines too, and of course eating them! One of my favourite cuisines is Indian and Vietnamese food.
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love this thread idea!! i also love cultures/languages (i might want to be an anthropologist or linguist). i’m especially interested in romance languages and the differences and similarities of the cultures where they are spoken. i am pretty proficient at spanish but would like to learn italian and spanish too.
also @Sinusodial–i’m latvian too, on my dad’s side. his grandfather, max, came to the U.S. through ellis island from latvia (basically all my ancestors came here through ellis island i think). i actually have ancestry from almost every eastern european country, plus italy. anyway i don’t think i’ve met another person with latvian ancestry before, so it’s cool that you’re very interested in that. i don’t know too much about the country/its culture and would like to learn more.
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Well, if we’re talking about culture, Uzbek skullcaps (called doppis) are super fascinating! I was doing some research on them for a school project. They’re apparently an old form of craftsmanship – there would be designers and embroiderers, and the craft was passed down from mother to daughter. There are lots of different embroidery techniques, and the caps can even be embroidered with gold thread!! And the patterns mean lots of different things – like pomegranates mean fertility, and birds portray happiness. Sixteen flowers mean that the wearer has sixteen children! There’s actually an Uzbek saying, apparently: “The honor and conscience of a man lies in his skullcap” or something like that. It used to be that skullcaps would vary according to regions, so you could actually tell where someone was from just by the cap.
It just seems so cool to make a plain old ordinary garment into something so pretty and meaningful. If you look up pictures online, some of them are absolutely gorgeous!! I’d love to wear one myself. Disclaimer, though: not being from Uzbekistan myself, I might have made a lot of mistakes in my research – I was using articles from reputable sources that seemed to be written by people from the general region, but still, people are always making mistakes about Mexican culture so maybe my research on Uzbek stuff is all wrong too – just take it with a grain of salt, in case:) And feel free to correct me too:)