Although the following area is not necessarily involving details of daily life, I would like to include recreation and travel because it is an interesting field of comparison for me, considering that my husband and my children used to regularly travel and sightsee around Germany and Europe. My main point is that we had to mostly abstain from this habit since we moved to the U.S. for several reasons. Visiting worthy sights in the U.S. appears to be more expensive, and most important, traveling to interesting sights takes much longer (which will add to the higher prices when you have to book accommodations). A smaller factor, but also important, is the factor of high crime rates within U.S. major cities; European cities definitely have crime
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Eriksen makes clear that “there is an intimate connection between the categories and structures of a language and the ways in which humans are able to experience the world and express their world-view to others” (2010, p. 240). Also, Eriksen cites Whorf’s theory which entails that “the language of a people will therefore be a significant source of knowledge about their mode of thought, their cosmology, and their everyday life” (2010, p. 240). Thanks to globalization, which according to Eriksen, favors the distribution of certain languages over others, English is taught in German schools. During my school-time, children started learning English from the fifth grade onwards; however, when my own daughter visited a German elementary school, we learned that the German school board had lowered the age for learning English as a second language to the third grade throughout elementary schools. Globally, English is the most important language followed by Spanish and Mandarin Chinese; this might explains why there is no second language requirement in U.S. public schools. When I first moved to the United States, knowing the language allowed me to communicate with the people of the community and my husband’s relatives, known as a “kinship system” by anthropologists. So, the easiest way to learn about another culture might be through careful observation and active participation, while using technology to read up on information is yet another way of learning about other cultures. The internet is teeming with “short ethnographies” in form of travelogues and newspaper articles that explain the basics of another culture to the potential
Eriksen makes clear that “there is an intimate connection between the categories and structures of a language and the ways in which humans are able to experience the world and express their world-view to others” (2010, p. 240). Also, Eriksen cites Whorf’s theory which entails that “the language of a people will therefore be a significant source of knowledge about their mode of thought, their cosmology, and their everyday life” (2010, p. 240). Thanks to globalization, which according to Eriksen, favors the distribution of certain languages over others, English is taught in German schools. During my school-time, children started learning English from the fifth grade onwards; however, when my own daughter visited a German elementary school, we learned that the German school board had lowered the age for learning English as a second language to the third grade throughout elementary schools. Globally, English is the most important language followed by Spanish and Mandarin Chinese; this might explains why there is no second language requirement in U.S. public schools. When I first moved to the United States, knowing the language allowed me to communicate with the people of the community and my husband’s relatives, known as a “kinship system” by anthropologists. So, the easiest way to learn about another culture might be through careful observation and active participation, while using technology to read up on information is yet another way of learning about other cultures. The internet is teeming with “short ethnographies” in form of travelogues and newspaper articles that explain the basics of another culture to the potential