Cross-Cultural Understanding : Learning about Cultural Differences
Culture is the characteristic and knowledge of a particular group of people, defined by everything from language, religions, cuisines, social habits, music and arts. Many countries are largely populated by immigrant, and the culture is influenced by the many groups of people that now make up the country. The world, nowadays, are dominated by two cultures which are called eastern and western culture. These two differences have created much diversity in each country. So as the focus of this article is comparing cultural differences in Indonesia as the eastern culture and some American countries as the western culture.
1. Sneezing
In Indonesia when someone sneezes he or she will say “maaf”, especially for muslem will say “alhamdulillah” and the people who heard it will say “Yarhamukallah”. This custom is influenced by religion. In other side, when somebody in Mexico sneezes people will say “Bless you”. While American people have different way, they will say nothing when sneezing. It means in Indonesia and Mexico do not say nothing is impolite but in the United States is polite.
2. Eating Food
Both Indonesia and the United States have similarities in eating food. People of these country usually change their menu in each mealtime. They also have short time to prepare their breakfast; it is because the people rush in doing the routine activities every morning. Despite the similarity both indonesia and the United states have many differences. Indonesia people eat similar food for lunch and dinner every day, which is rice. While Americans eat various food for lunch and dinner such as pizza, sandwiches, pasta and noodle.
4. Prepare Food for Lunch and Dinner
In the United States mostly they take longer time for dinner than lunch. On other hands, in Indonesia, people take longer time to prepare lunch than dinner. They only warm the food that was cooked at noon for dinner instead of making more.
5. Food Taste
In general, Americans prefer a sweet taste or a little bit salty in their food. In contrast, most Indonesian people like a hot and spicy taste in their food. Also, Indonesian would like to eat food that still warms instead of food that is not warm anymore. Therefore they always warm their food before eating. On the other hand, American people admit to eat food that isn’t warm, like sandwiches.
6. Driving
In general, the similarity of driving in the U.S and Indonesia is driver has to respect to pedestrians when they meet them on the street, specifically when the pedestrian want to across the street. They have to give opportunity to pedestrian first when the traffic light is red before they continue driving. If they don’t obey this rule, and an accident happens.On the other hand, there are some different in driving in the U.S. and Indonesia. For example is crossing street without traffic light. People in the United States more respect to the pedestrian than in Indonesia in this situation. In Indonesia, a driver doesn’t care about pedestrian, if they don’t across the street on the appropriate place, like at traffic light. They keep driving fast, although they see pedestrian want to across the street. In contrast, in the U.S. driver always respect to pedestrian, although they across the street without traffic light.
Based on those differences it can be concluded that learning culture is normative. Right and wrong depends on where someone is located. By understanding cross cultural differences we can adapt to the culture in which we are. It means that learning about cultures is important then people can respect to other cultures by keeping their own culture.
Regard,
ALFYD, English Language Teacher
