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Western culture and Eastern culture:
Western culture is defined by the culture of European countries or those countries which are greatly influenced by the European countries. Heritage of social norms, beliefs, political systems, customs, and values differ western culture from other culture. Not only the European countries follow the western culture but also those countries which are strongly influenced by the immigration of Europe follow western culture. For example, America and Australia are countries that follow European culture. With Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome, the historical records of western culture were begun in Europe. With the passage of time, European culture developed with the wide range of philosophy, mysticism, Christian, and humanism. The rational thinking of European people also developed over the time.
Eastern culture is defined by the social norms, customs, beliefs, attitudes and other natural thoughts of the countries that are located in the east of Europe. For example, China, Japan, Korea and the Indian subcontinent are some countries that follow eastern culture (Fiske, 2011). Eastern culture is also influenced but not by the other countries like western. Rather eastern culture is heavily influenced by religious factors. It has been also found that people following eastern culture are more family oriented, more emotional and more focused on agricultural sectors Eastern culture is considered to be more colorful and more interesting. Moreover, Asia is considered to be the world’s most populated continent having the most diversified culture.
Comparison of Languages:
There is no official language of the United States, according to the United States government. But around ninety percent of United States people frequently speaks and understands English. But there are some other languages which are mostly used in the United States and those are French, Spanish, German and Chinese (Widdig, 2007). But mostly used official language is English. Hindi is the official language in India but English is regarded as a provisional official sub-language. There are different official languages for different states of India but the constitution also allows the use of English for official purposes. From one survey it has been found that around 63% people of United States use English as language and remaining others use Chinese, Portuguese, Dutch, French, Spanish and other languages and in India, around 51% people use Hindi as their language
And other people use Tamil, Marathi, Gujarati or Bengali as their language. So, in language perspective, it can be said that both the countries have their own uniqueness.
Comparison of Foods:
The cuisine of United States was influenced by Europeans and Native Americans. Today there are a number of foods that are mostly known as Americans. Hamburgers, hot dogs, meatloaf, cacaroni and cheese, potato chips are the foods which are meant to be American food. The style of cooking these foods varies in different regions of United States (Bahadur, 2007). On the other hand, in India, the traditional food has been receiving a lot of appreciations. India has a different style of cooking and has the uniqueness of using herbs and spices which is rare in the food of United States.
In India, the cuisine also differs within the country as there are so many types of cuisines. For example, Bengali food, Gujarati food, Kashmiri food, Mughlai cuisine, Panjabi food, Rajasthani food. Different state has different food of its own and bears specialty in those cuisines.
Comparison of Sports:
The United States is regarded as a sports-minded country. It has millions of fans who follow the most enjoyed sports, such as, football, basket6ball, hockey, baseball. Baseball is a different kind of sport played in the United States. It was developed in colonial America and became an amazing sport for the people of United States (Richardson, 2011). They also enjoy football a lot and its quite popular sport among them. Sport is regarded as an important part of Indian culture. Cricket is the most popular sport in India. India has won the World Cup for 2 times (1983&2011), T20 World Cup 2007, and ICC Champions Trophy 2013 having some legendary cricketers like Kapil Dev, Rahul Dravid, Sachin Tendulkar and many more. Soccer is 2nd most watched game by Indians and the Indian national soccer team is ranked 156th in FIFA ranking. So this is also a popular sport among Indians. Besides these sports, field hockey, badminton, tennis, chess, motor sports, wrestling, table tennis, basketball are some sports that are mostly enjoyed by the people of India.
Comparison of Festivals:
India is very well known for its cultural and traditional festivals in all over the world. It has many cultures and religions, as a result, the number of festivals is also higher. One can easily attend any festival celebration almost in every month of the year (Goody, 2014). People from different religion have own traditional festivals but there are even some festivals that are celebrated by the people of all religion, cast, language. Celebrating the festivals holds a great significance in the life of Indian people (Richardson, 2011). Most celebrated festivals of Hindu people are Holi, Chaitra Navaratri, Janmashtami, Diwali, Durga Puja etc. Muslim people living in India also celebrate many festivals like Eid-ul-Fitr, Eid-ul-Adha, Muharram, Ramadan, Jamat-ul-Vida etc.
Most of the public holidays in the United States have either political or historical background. But apart from that, people of United States celebrate some festivals that have been brought along to the new world by the ethnic groups of people in the United States. The most celebrated festival is Christmas Day. Though this festival is celebrated all over the world people of United States celebrate it in such flamboyant style (Richardson, 2011). Homes, trees and outdoor are decorated with fairy lights and special part is Santa Claus figures. Halloween is another popular festival among the people of United States. This festival is all about remembering the souls that had not made up to heaven and also keep the transience of earthly existence in mind. The main focus of this festive is on scary dressing up and it is wholly pranked based festival. Besides these festivals, people of United States celebrate other festivals like Valentines’ day, independence day, thanksgiving etc. Though both the countries celebrate lots of festivals there are huge differences between the way of celebrating those festivals and the festivals themselves.
Conclusion:
It is said, ‘East is East and West is west, neither is better nor worse than the other’. Considering India having eastern culture and the United States having a western culture we can only say that both the countries have a diversified culture which holds much uniqueness of their own. The differences are not only because of its demographical differences rather religion, beliefs, values, attitude toward life are most effective reasons for the cultural differences. Culture is something that has been following for many years by the beholders and has differences even within one country as the way of celebrating is not same in all parts of the country or even in the world. But it is also true that culture does not remain the same as before because it changes over the time or the way of celebrating also changes for the betterment. The characteristics of each culture are shown in people’s behavior, personalities and way of living life and that’s how the culture plays a great role in the life of people from India and United States.
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