this is to give brief introductions of cultural identies of some English-speaking countries and Vietnam.
If you're American...
You know how baseball, basketball, and American football are
played. If you're male, you can argue intricate points about theirrules. On the other hand (and unless you're under about 20), you
don't care that much for soccer.
You count yourself fortunate if you get three weeks of
vacation a year.
Figure name here
A figure's caption would go here. It
could offer a more detailed explanation of thefigure than offered in the name.
If you died tonight...
You're fairly likely to believe in God; if not, you've
certainly been approached by people asking whether you know thatyou're going to Heaven.
You think of McDonald's, Burger King, KFC etc. as cheap
food.
You probably own a telephone and a TV. Your place is heated
in the winter and has its own bathroom. You do your laundry in amachine. You don't kill your own food. You don't have a dirt floor.
You eat at a table, sitting on chairs.
You don't consider insects, dogs, cats, monkeys to be
food.
A bathroom may not have a bathtub in it, but it certainly has
a toilet.
It seems natural to you that the telephone system, railroads,
auto manufacturers, airlines, and power companies are privatelyrun; indeed, you can hardly picture things working
differently.
You expect, as a matter of course, that the phones will work.
Getting a new phone is routine.
The train system, by contrast, isn't very good. Trains don't
go any faster than cars; you're better off taking a plane.
You expect the politicians to be responsive to business,
strong on defense, and concerned with the middle class.
Between "black" and "white" there are no other races. Someone
with one black and one white parent looks black to you.
You think most problems could be solved if only people would
put aside their prejudices and work together.
You take a strong court system for granted, even if you don't
use it. You know that if you went into business and had problemswith a customer, partner, or supplier, you could take them to
court.
You'd respect someone who speaks French, German, or
Japanese-- but you very likely don't yourself speak them wellenough to communicate with a monolingual foreigner.
It's not all that necessary to learn foreign languages
anyway. You can travel the continent using nothing but English--and get by pretty well in the rest of the world.
College is (normally, and excluding graduate study) four
years long.
Everybody knows that
Mustard comes in jars. Shaving cream comes in cans. Milk
comes in plastic jugs or cardboard boxes, and occasionally inbottles.
The date comes second: 11/22/63.
The decimal point is a dot. Certainly not a comma.
A billion is a thousand times a million.
You expect marriages to be made for love, not arranged by
third parties. Getting married by a judge is an option, but not arequirement; most marriages happen in church. You have a best man
and a maid at the wedding-- a friend or a sibling. And, naturally,a man gets only one wife at a time.
Once you're introduced to someone (well, besides the
President and other lofty figures), you can call them by theirfirst name.
If you're a woman, you don't go to the beach topless.
You'd rather a film be subtitled than dubbed (if you go to
foreign films at all).
You seriously expect to be able to transact business, or deal
with the government, without paying bribes.
If a politican has been cheating on his wife, you would
question his ability to govern.
