SDLC 110 Cultural Post #8

[Jessica Crouser]

The in-class cultural presentations were very interesting and it was cool to see which elements of their respective languages' cultures my peers were interested in. Some were socially focused (gender roles), some more historical (Turkey's alphabet transition), and some more cultural (holidays in Bangladesh). It reinforced the fact that culture is such an integral part of a country or group of people who speak a language. It adds daily elements to their lifestyles that make their group unique. It also showed that there are so many elements to each culture and the entire culture cannot be summed up in one presentation. For example, I did mine on university life in Korea, but I could have also done gender roles, history, holidays, etc. like my peers did for their target languages, which would have shown a totally different element of Korean culture. This was shown in the other Korean presentations, in which the focus was so different from mine that I learned a lot even though I was studying the same target language. There were also similarities, as in Yixi's presentation on Korean work culture, she showed that the terms for elder/more experienced worker vs younger/less experienced worker were the same terms I used in my presentation that refer to upper- and underclassmen.