Cultural diversity in the modern world

The modern world can be called multicultural due to cultural and ethnic diversity. Through the process of globalization and immigration modern society has become a mixture of different nations and cultures. Cross-cultural contacts have grown significantly nowadays. Thanks to globalization we can enjoy foreign goods, food, music, ideas, technologies and practices. Thus there are own national holidays and cultural traditions in every country or even a region. I’d like to tell something about the traditions of celebrating birthday in different countries.

The tradition of birthday parties started in Europe a long time ago. It was feared that evil spirits were particularly attracted to people on their birthdays. To protect them from harm, friends and family would to come be with the birthday person and bring good thoughts and wishes. Giving gifts brought even more good cheer to ward off the evil spirits. At first it was only kings who were recognized as important enough to have a birthday celebration. A formal ball was planned and announcements were sent through the land. As time went by, children became included in birthday celebrations.  And today birthday is a common holiday for every person all over the world. And although birthday traditions are quite similar in some countries today, not everyone celebrates in the same way. Beyond any doubt every family has its own way to celebrate it, but I’d like to focus on differences, which have historical and cultural reasons. 

For example in Vietnam only a few urban people, influenced by Western customs, celebrate birthdays. Everyone else celebrate their birthday on New Year’s Day. The Vietnamese do not acknowledge the exact day they were born. A baby turns one on New Year’s Day no matter when he or she was born that year. On the first celebration, adults congratulate children on becoming a year older by presenting them with red envelopes that contain " Lucky Money". These envelopes are given to the children by parents, relatives and close friends.

As we know in Russia there is a tradition to pull birthday child by his ears and in Ireland it is customary to hold the child upside down and " bump" the child on the floor for every years of his (plus one extra " bump" ) for good luck.

In the religious countries or the countries of Africa the traditions of celebrating are based on the ethnical and religions differences. In India, where Hindu is the most common religion, it is customary for a child celebrating his first birthday to have his head shaved. This act symbolizes the shedding of negative energies associated with past lives. Additionally, the birthday child is dressed in bright clothing and visit a shrine for a special prayer. Or for example In Uruguay when a girl reaches the age of 15, she puts on a formal dress and dances with possible fiance.

It’s possible to say that the Western idea of celebrating a birthday with cake and candles has certainly caught on in other parts of the world, but many cultures have long-standing traditional ways to celebrate. Although many of them are more traditional and hypothetical than a reality.

Global English

 

There are over 70 English-speaking countries in the world. They are: Great Britain, the United States of America, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and also some small states, which are situated on the islands in the Pacific Ocean.

The history of these countries is closely connected with the history of Great Britain as a great sea-power. In ancient times, England had the most powerful fleet in the world, which was the best in all the seas and oceans. The English ships sailed across the seas and oceans in all the directions and the English sailors made sea-voyages to different regions of the world. It’s not surprising, that the majority of great discovers and explorers were among the English people who were eager to bring glory to their native country and they took part in the exploring expeditions around the world and to different far-away regions. The aims of their expeditions were to discover new lands and to explore unknown continents and islands. As a result England conquered a lot of new territories. After that thousands of the people left their Motherland – England, reached the shores of new lands which had been just discovered, settle down on those territories and stayed there for ever.

Nowadays, the English-speaking countries are situated in different parts of the world. They differ in their geographical position, their climate, their nature and the way of life, which their people lead. Every country has its own national history, traditional, holidays and customs. But all of them have one thing in common. All of them speak a common language, the language of people who many centuries ago came from England to make their home in new countries.

Therefore English could be called a world language. It is a universal language of progressive science and technology, trade and cultural relations, commerce and business. It is also the major language of diplomacy. Hundreds and hundreds of books, magazines and newspapers are printed in English and read all over the world. Half of the world’s scientific literature is written in English. More than 350 million people speak on this language. Geographically it is the most widespread language on earth, second only to Chinese in the number of people who speak it. English can be at least understood almost everywhere among scholars and educated people, as it is the world media language, and the language of cinema, TV, pop music and the computer world

English is also one of the most studied languages across the world, in many countries it is learned as a second language from primary school. As per the statistics, it said that the English language is one of the easiest languages to learn, if we compare it with languages like Chinese, German, French and even Spanish. It is such an important language worldwide, that 80% of the information that we find in the internet is in English.

 

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