Hospitality in the middle east
Peru - super fresh, locally grown food; incredibly hard working people who are super friendly
Ireland - craic
New Zealand - respect of the environment, freedom camping
France - long luxurious meals with family/friends; delicious pastries; willing to burn shit down when political leaders forget who they work for
Yerba mate and dulce de leche (though not together)
Persian food, especially the rice dishes.
They all have something. It’s like just statistically inevitable, since none of them were really designed.
Pretty much every culture other than progressive Western has stronger extended families, which is nice. Squatting is a great way to sit if you start young. Both eating everything with four legs except a table, and being vegetarian are more logically consistent dietary preferences. Toilet paper is dumb.
Languages are pretty similar. English has some nice features, but having a word for the day before yesterday would be handy, for example.
Yesterday eve
Norwegian have forgårs which means the day before yesterday. It’s used a lot, it’s surprising English does not have a word for this. Is the most common way: 2 days ago?
In Turkish they* say
it jumped out of my hand 🤷♀️😎
instead of
I dropped it 😬
kinda like how we say accident instead of crash
*the folks I knew at least
I have always found saris really exquisite. But as a white lady from the Midwest USA, and no people in my life at all from cultures that wear them, it would be weird to have or wear one. I’d never want to wear it like a costume but they are so beautiful.
Similarly, bunad here in Norway where I live now. I didn’t grow up here and I only skate by on languages most of the time, I’m not tied to the culture by marriage or children. I just love it here. But because I’m just an immigrant, I’d feel strange wearing one. But one of my absolute favorite parts of 17 May celebrations (Constitution Day) is going out in the city and seeing all of the various bunad from different regions of Norway. I don’t know if I’ll ever feel Norwegian enough to wear one without feeling like an impostor/appropriator.
Totally agree on the sari, was at a friend’s wedding and the bridesmaids were all wearing them, many of them white but the bride was Indian. Was so jealous that they had the opportunity to wear them, and not just wear but get fully dressed up for the event.
Im a US American, how much time do you have? There is almost no aspect of my culture I wouldn’t trade for another. Music I’ll keep but everything else… meh
I quite often feel americans show a lot of interest in new people they meet. If I tell something about myself usually they think its ‘amazing’ or ‘wonderful’, ask questions, not often steer the conversation to themselves. I think thats a quite nice cultural thing you have.
I hang out with drunk Chinese people for work and there is no friendlier bunch around. I also admire the Chinese cultural focus on gardening and growing plants
I don’t remember what it’s called, but in Japan there is a tendency to repair things rather than replace them; and further than that, a repair made properly can be see as enhancing the beauty of an object. I like that.
Really petty but I’m jealous of Norways football crowd activity where everyone pretends to row a boat.
Tipping culture, the lack of it everywhere but the US seemingly. Tips as a substitute for wages is awful. In the US servers are paid inadequately without tipping and so a culture of tipping is the north
Meh, lots of that exists in Canada and mexico as well, unfortunately
It’s not quite the same in Canada, though. Even when we used to have a different minimum wage for tipped workers, it was only a couple dollars per hour less than regular minimum wage. As far as I know, servers are now paid the same minimum wage as everyone else here. I’ve seen people say that server minimum wage in the US can be like $2 an hour.
The Spanish got it figured out with their siestas.
Also starting each question with the upside down question mark so you know how to read it out loud properly.
Do they do that informally too? In formal English language writing, the majority of interrogative sentences can be correctly interpreted by their starting with “question words” or helping verbs. This breaks down in informal writing e.g. “you up?” vs ”Are you up?" In the little Spanish I know, I’d say “¿Estas despierto?” (I know I’m missing accents but I speak Spanish way more than I can read it.) Would I still text it to someone that way even though extra characters are what is typically taken off in informal writing? In the English example, the helping verb is removed. In the Spanish version, would the upside down question mark be removed?
Not used at all. It’s even weird to see anyone do it outside of formal texts.
I’m working on a conlang.
Thanks for that tip.
Oh fuck yes!
Came here to say this
Portuguese desenracanço - inventiveness to make something out of nothing, or get by in difficult circumstances.
The food culture in France. Eating lunch for 2-3 hours (not every day naturally), enjoying tasty, well-prepared food and enjoying fine company.
