Category: General

What Cultural Traditions Mean

Culture, like language, defines a human population. It fosters a sense of identity in the same way as language does. If you can speak the same language as others, you generally share many of their cultural traditions. Today, many of these distinctive cultural traditions are changing fast, taken over by a more uniform, globalized, consumer-centered culture. Colombians may speak Spanish, Vietnamese may speak Vietnamese, and Moroccans Arabic and Berber, but they all recognize MacDonald’s beef burgers and Big Macs! Culture is important for many people because it gives them a sense of identity, but the homogenization of culture that is happening today means that that very sense of identity is gradually disappearing. No one seems to be sure if that is bad or good.

Interesting Cultural Traditions Around the World

There are literally hundreds of unique cultures around the world. Visitors from one culture are often surprised, amused, or even horrified when they first encounter another culture. After a time these impressions fade as people realize that humanity is more or less the same all over the world. It often comes down to cultural translation, which is the ability to understand what cultural oddities actually mean.

Take the French kiss, for example. Many people in Europe kiss on the meeting, but the French have elevated kissing as a greeting to an art form. It takes time to appreciate that there are different ways to kiss, depending on how familiar you are with the person you are greeting. Australians, on the other hand, prefer a firm handshake, Americans a hug or a pat on the back, Maori New Zealanders a hongi (a touching of the nose), while Indians put the palms of their hands together in front of them as a greeting. They all mean more or less the same when they are translated, but the differences can take time to learn, just like language.

Tradition and Translation

Cultural customs around the world may mean the same thing in principle, but they take time to learn. Traditional customs do need to be translated if they are to mean anything to those who don’t share that culture. The importance of cultural translation cannot be underestimated as it is essential if people of different cultures are to get on peacefully and co-operate together.

Culture and tradition are important to take into account when visiting another part of the world, or even within your own borders where people of different cultures rub shoulders. Take the practice of pointing in the western world, for example. In many African cultures, as well as Islamic culture in other parts of the world, it is rude to point with the finger at something, especially another human being. It is fine, however, to use the thumb! In Nicaragua, in a totally unrelated cultural tradition, people use their lips to point at something. It takes practice to learn what to do, but this sort of cultural translation is important to communicate effectively.

Summary:- There is a need for cross-cultural translation

In a way, it is a bit of a contradiction that there is a surge in the demand for language translators at present, but not for cultural translators. The world is globalizing fast and there is recognition everywhere that language translation is essential for communication in the modern world. However, there is a significant lag in the recognition that there is also a need for cross-cultural translation. One wonders just how much violence, unease, and war might not have happened over the centuries had cultural translators existed to teach all of us, world citizens, what other people were trying to say with their actions.

It often seems galling to those of us adults who are struggling to learn a new language to acknowledge just how easily human babies learn a language well enough to speak it. They don’t go to school to learn how to speak. They don’t read books or use Google. They don’t go to evening classes or have private tutors. How do they do it?

Researchers have known for a long time that human babies are instinctively wired to learn to communicate using the language of those around them as they grow up. That means all babies, everywhere around the world. In fact, babies not only learn to speak easily but their method of learning how to speak and communicate verbally also cannot be replicated when you are older. That’s a pity because it means that when you are an adult, it can be much more of a struggle to learn a new language, partly because of the language that you have grown up with acts as a confusing impediment.

A Baby’s Language Learning Timeline

Much of a baby’s language learning unbelievably occurs before they reach five years old. Of course, there is no exact chronology involved. Every baby is unique and follows an independent trajectory when it comes to learning a language and there are a lot of extrinsic factors that come into play, helping or hindering that process.

Before Birth

A baby’s ability to learn a language is dependent on how its brain is designed and also how it develops after birth, as well as how the baby interacts with its external human environment. Even before birth, it is believed that a fetus is already aware of the human sounds made close to where it basks inside its mother’s womb. There is evidence that fetuses actually tune in to human voices and are able to recognize and prefer the sound of their own mother’s voice.

After birth, the first methods of communication used by the baby until it can start to verbalize involve body language and vocalization in the form of bubbles, babbles, squeals, cries, and screams. Babies are acutely interested in human faces and watch and listen carefully when people around them speak, especially when they speak to them.

The First-Year

In the first year of a baby’s life, the baby starts to make unique vocalizations expressing their feelings of pleasure, fear, hunger, and discomfort. They start to use vowel-like sounds and experiment with combinations of noises as well as listening intently when people around them interact with them. At this stage, babies all around the world appear to share the same characteristics, presaging the learning of the language which the baby first experiences.

As a baby grows, it starts to experiment with single words, then combinations of two words together then short sentences of three or more, none of which may not make much sense, to begin with.

The Second-Year

A crucial stage of a baby’s language development occurs after the first year when it now already recognizes words like ‘mama’ and ‘dada,’ its own name and is experimenting vigorously, and often loudly, with combinations of vowels and consonants that start to sound more like the native language they are hearing all around them.

At this stage, they already understand and recognize other words used, even if they can’t vocalize them themselves. It is recognized that in early baby language learning the comprehensive stage, i.e. the ability to recognize words, comes before the expressive stage when these words are actually used in a meaningful way by the baby itself.

By the baby’s second year, there has been tremendous growth in language learning, although there is considerable variation between individual babies, which is partly due to genetics and partly due to the way they have been brought up and the richness of human interaction they have experienced. At 24 months from birth, most babies will be able to recognize many words representing familiar objects, as well as commands like ‘no,’ ‘up’ and ‘down.’ They will also be able to use at least 50 words themselves, although many of their utterances may be incomprehensible to older people.

The Third-Year

By three years old, most of what the infant is saying makes sense. It will be able to speak in short sentences, enjoy using multi-syllable words, ask short questions, and crucially learn 9 or 10 new words a day. That growth in vocabulary continues during childhood and early adolescence. At the end of this phase of development, the infant will have acquired a vocabulary of around 400 words or more and be able to create sentences of their own rather than just repeat words and word combinations they have heard.

The Fourth-Year

By the end of the fourth year, children will have developed a working vocabulary of around 1,000 words or more, understand most of what they hear, express themselves sufficiently to make their needs and want to be heard, ask simple questions and construct simple sentences. Differences between one child’s speed of language acquisition and another’s are obvious, even within a single-family.

The Fifth-Year

By five years old, when in many countries children first go to primary school, they have acquired a working vocabulary of 2,500 words or more, can use verbs correctly, understand and use past and future tenses, understand and use prepositions, are able to carry on a conversation and ask innumerable questions.

Conclusion

Babies are instinctively designed by nature to learn the language that they are exposed to from before birth. They do so in a way that is quite different from the way that older people learn a new language. The way that babies learn a language seems to be universal but can be influenced by the human environment in which they grow up. This can help to speed up or slow down their natural language acquisition.

By the age of 5, little humans, for all practical purposes, have learned all the basic components of their native language.

Some people might think that TV programmes and the commercials that almost universally fund them are on the road to extinction, replaced by online entertainment, news and information reporting, and advertising. However, this doesn’t seem to be the case. TV viewing is, if anything, even more, important than ever before. That means that advertising in the form of TV commercials remains a vital business decision, one that can potentially get products and services into millions of homes every day.

As evidence for the continuing importance of TV and TV commercials is the statistics for the number of hours that ordinary people watch TV. For example, in the U.S., where access to the internet and the ownership of multiple internet accessible devices is near universal, the average number of hours of TV watched is astounding. 12 to 17-year-olds are the least interested in TV, yet still, watch an average of nearly 21 hours of TV every week. The older the cohort of viewers, the more TV is consumed. 65-year-olds and upwards, i.e. the retired population, for the most part, watch well over 50 hours on average every week.

It must be remembered that for every hour of TV watching unless there are specifically non-commercial channels available (e.g. Britain’s BBC and its Australian counterpart, the ABC), at least 20% of that TV viewing consists of watching TV commercials, even if it is rather reluctantly. The message of desirable purchase and consumption is drummed into billions of peoples’ heads around the world every single day.

There are two other observations to be made here before delving into the effect of culture on commercials and vice versa. First, commercials are out to persuade viewers to part with their money and buy whatever is being advertised. The statistics quoted, if repeated elsewhere apart from the U.S. reveal that those who have the most disposable income, i.e. the oldest, watch TV and therefore commercials the most. Secondly, TV commercials reach millions of people simultaneously, whereas internet-based advertising is by its very nature more limited in scope and targeted. Businesses that have the money budgeted for advertising are more likely to spend big on TV advertising than internet advertising simply because they have a much bigger audience.

How Culture Affects the Design of Commercials

Businesses advertise for one main reason: to persuade as many people as possible to buy their products and services. Commercials are all about maximizing profit. To do so they must target who the businesses think they can sell the most to. They must use the language and cultural nuances of their target audience to the utmost or risk viewers tuning out.

All advertising is a risky business. It’s hard to tell in advance whether a particular commercial will be effective. There are some very simple reasons why culture affects the design and presentation of any one TV commercial. For a start, commercials tend to focus on those they think have the most money to spend. In many countries with diverse ethnic groups, there is often a big disparity in wealth between one ethnic group and another. This isn’t lost on TV commercial designers who don’t tend to waste time using the poorer ethnic groups in their advertising. They use the language and ethnicity of the wealthier population.

TV commercials, like any commercial advertising, are all about maximizing the return of profit to the businesses that pay advertising agencies to make the commercials for them. A lot of time and money on research into what makes people part with their cash is spent by these agencies. They tilt their commercials to emphasize the aspects of human nature that people aspire to. For example, in Australia, where 30% of the adult population is obese, it is highly unlikely that obese people will feature in any TV commercial, even if this is representative of the population as a whole! TV commercials consistently use subjects in their advertising who are younger, more attractive, healthier, wealthier, more athletic and seemingly happier than the general population of viewers. Presumably, this is because their research has shown them that if older, less attractive, unfit, sad, poor and sluggish people were featured in their adverts they wouldn’t be so popular!

Culture can also have positive influences over advertising. It is not permitted these days in most western countries to advertise the smoking of tobacco products on TV, largely because the damaging health effects of smoking have finally filtered their way through society so that there is little controversy about it. Contrast that with the 1970s when it was common to see adverts featuring young, beautiful, healthy, seemingly fit people smoking like chimneys on TV commercials!

In this regard, commercials tend to lag behind the changes in a society’s norms and cultural understanding. One of the biggest disconnects between a changing culture and the attitude of commercial advertising is in society’s growing awareness and response to climate change. It is generally now recognized by all but a few diehards that the use of fossil fuels in the amounts that the world has got used to is foolhardy. Yet there is no sign that TV commercials showing appealingly shiny, fast cars and chunky SUVs are going on the same road to oblivion as adverts for cigarettes and smoking!

Conclusion

TV advertising is still a very important way that businesses, especially the major brands, can reach millions of potential consumers. TV commercials are not going to die away soon and seem to be running nicely alongside the use of the internet, rather than be in competition with it.

Culture is probably one of the biggest influences on exactly what is shown on commercials. Businesses are out to get people to spend their money on their products and services and will use every trick in the book to get their message across. They have discovered very early on that successful adverts are those that give their viewers the illusion that they may be younger, wealthier, healthier and more attractive if they purchase the products they are seeing advertised. It may be an illusion but it is a reflection of what the general population wishes it was, rather than what it really is.

It might seem strange to think that there is a noticeable German influence in Australia, but in fact, there has been a significant German presence in the island continent since the early days of European colonization in the nineteenth century.

Waves of German immigration to Australia have paralleled historical events in the German-speaking parts of Europe. German migrants to Australia have brought with them their language and many aspects of their culture, which over the years has become modified and merged into the broader Australian way of life.

Why did Germans Come to Australia?

The largest German waves of immigration into Australia took place in the middle to the late nineteenth century and again before the middle of the twentieth. Many came because of religious persecution at home or because of a thirst for exploration or a desire for economic improvement. Many of the first Germans in Australia settled in Melbourne and then expanded across Victoria and into South Australia, where they still remain as a significant cultural and linguistic presence in the Barossa Valley.

Before and after the Second World War German Jews fled their homeland, as they did to many other parts of the world, escaping persecution. Migration from Germany to Australia of course stopped during the first and second world wars, and many Australians of German origin were interned during the Second World War, but as soon as the war ended a new wave of migrants arrived, the numbers gradually dropping as Germany itself recovered and developed into an economic powerhouse of its own.

German Culture in Australia

Australians of original German ancestry still possess a unique culture that is part of German origin and partly Australian, albeit much reduced compared to the past. Barossa-German was a dialect spoken by Barossa migrants and had its origin in the Brandenburg district of Prussia from where many of the migrants had emigrated from. This particular dialect is rarely heard today in South Australia. A few words may have become part of the Australian lexicon like the word “butcher,” which is a small 200ml glass of beer in an Aussie pub, probably a corruption of the Prussian word “Becher.”

Many German recipes and food specialties made the passage down under with the migrants and their enjoyment has continued through to today. Blutwurst, Leberwurst, Mettwurst, and Weißwurst are all well known as well as sauerkraut and Streuselkuchen.

German Visitors to Australia Today

Today, modern Germany has become an important economic partner of Australia and there are many German businesses that have a significant presence in the country. Over 100,000 Australian students are learning German as a language and a new wave of visitors are on the move in both directions. Young and older Australians regularly visit Germany as part of a wider visit to Europe, some of them staying and making Germany their home. At the same time, thousands of German tourists travel to Australia every year, over 200,000 alone from Germany last year!

Germans are great travelers, partly because the German economy at home is relatively strong and even young Germans have sufficient cash to make long trips away from home as tertiary education is subsidized or provided free by the German government, freeing graduates from the worry of paying back a loan. Many younger Germans stay in Australia on working holiday visas; others come to Australia to study and still, others are just making a short trip to Australia to visit friends, relatives, or as tourists.

Conclusion

Germany is an important trading partner with Australia and many Germans these days earmark Australia as a destination for work, study, and travel as well as do business. It is a continuation of a long but not well-known tradition of Germany vs Australia connections that has endured since German migrants first made their way down in the early phases of European colonization. There is a strong Australian German connection in several parts of Southern Australia, especially Victoria and South Australia. The best known German contribution to Australian culture is the wine-growing region of the Barossa Valley where German traditions are still kept alive today, especially food and drink.

In Australia, Melbourne Cup Day is an annual horse racing event which is held on the 1^st Tuesday of November each year. Melbourne is in the state of Victoria and there is a public holiday declared in the state on Melbourne Cup day. Melbourne Cup in 2018 will be held on Tuesday 6^th November.

Melbourne Cup Facts

The annual Melbourne Cup happens to be one of the most popular racing and social events in Australia. The main event happens at the Flemington Racecourse in Melbourne attended by about 100,000 people. At the same time, local races take place in the country on the same day while the main event is broadcast on screens at race track venue throughout the country. Throughout the world, around 650 million viewers watch the event live and many at 3 pm Melbourne time so enthused by the event that they stop what they are doing to watch it either on TV or via the internet and if these sources aren’t available they listen to the main race on the radio. Many are getting their documents ready and visas translated in advance to attend the event!

The Melbourne Cup is a day when women attending the race dress up in colorful dresses and hats. Many take part in a fashion parade showing off their attire. As VIPs usually attend the race special marquees are constructed for their use. Champagne, wine, spirits, and gourmet foods are typically served on the day.

When it comes close to the time of the main race many offices and workplaces throughout the country put on their own events in support of the Melbourne Cup. These include dress and hat competitions and joint staff lunches at nearby restaurants. Big screens are erected making it possible for workers to view the event. It can’t be forgotten that this is an event when many people wage a bet on the winner.

Melbourne Cup history

Melbourne Cup Day became important in Australia since the 1^st race took place in 1861 at Victoria’s Flemington Racecourse. This first race was won by the horse Archer, who also won the race in1862. The event typically features several races, including a handicap race where 20 thoroughbreds are forced to run for several million Australian dollars. There was one well-known winner called Phar Lap, a New Zealand thoroughbred who in 1930 won the event and was subsequently given a nickname of “Australia’s wonder horse.” This later became a famous movie. When Phar Lap died the story goes that it was caused by poisoning.

In 1877 the 1^st Tuesday in November which was designated Melbourne Cup Day became a public holiday.  As there was not full adherence to the public holiday by all of Melbourne’s metropolitan councils in 2008 new legislation was passed by the Victorian Parliament ensured that Melbourne Cup Day was a public holiday throughout all the state’s council areas. This meant that Melbourne Cup Day became officially one of the state’s public holidays. From time to time similar race events take place in Australia because horse racing is a popular pastime.

Conclusion

Because Melbourne Cup Day is the best-known racing fixture in Australia and its importance brought on the need to declare the day a state public holiday it has now been given the phrase that it is “the race that stops the nation.” There are, however, a few Australians who consider horse racing to be a cruel sport and have protested over the years about the staging of the event. So far nothing has been done to stop the annual event taking place and there have never been any attempts to reform it in recent years.

The oldest human language is shrouded in mystery. The first language spoken on Earth is estimated to have emerged around 200,000 years ago in Southern or Eastern Africa. In fact, it is unlikely ever to be known just how the ability to communicate with language actually came about. It is thought that the need for better communication developed at the same time as the transformation of the African ecological environment in which early humans lived. Fossil evidence shows that the size of the hominid brain grew quite rapidly, presumably to accommodate parts of the brain that could deal with complex thought and verbal communication.

The real reason that we will never know what is the oldest language was spoken is that it would have predated written records by tens of thousands of years. By the time writing in the form of hieroglyphics became commonplace, languages would have developed all over the earth in places to which humanity had spread.

7,000 languages are recognized today

What we do know more about is the existence today of languages that have changed little through antiquity. There may be doubt about exactly what is the oldest living language, but there are certainly several contenders. There are around 7,000 languages in the world today. These are grouped in a much smaller number of language families. Languages evolve because people move away from where they used to live and because of isolation, gradually change the words and grammar they used to use.

The only record we have of the age of different languages is from written manuscripts and other forms of writing. There are several places around the world where writing developed independently. These places and the languages used at the time are presumed to be the world’s oldest living languages, but that is still not certain as there may be other languages in existence that were used by people who never used writing. For example, indigenous Australians have been on the Australian continent for at least 60,000 years according to the fossil record. No indigenous Australian community or language group ever invented or had any need to invent, writing, yet presumably, their languages are ancient.

Some of the oldest living languages are almost extinct

Of the languages we are certain about, some of the oldest are now functionally extinct. For example, one of present-day India’s oldest languages is Sanskrit. Although there are many monuments and buildings as well as documents that have been written in Sanskrit, it is not a living language. Some Indian scholars believe that there is evidence that Tamil, which is closely related to Sanskrit, may actually predate it and the language may be one of the oldest languages in the world at over 5,000 years old.

Latin is another ancient language and was in use throughout what is modern-day Europe and beyond for long periods before it died to be replaced by its descendants, the Romance language family, including Italian, Spanish, French, Romanian and Portuguese.

Back in Asia, Hebrew and Aramaic are also regarded as some of the world’s oldest living languages and have a linguistic affinity with Sumerian which first developed in the Middle East many thousands of years ago. Further to the East, the Korean language and Chinese are also very old languages, although, like many other languages that have been around for a long time, they have changed down the ages. It would be hard for a Korean from 1,000 years ago to probably a modern Korean today! They would probably need a translator.

Other old languages have changed through the ages, yet remain recognized as being related to the original. For example, Greek has been used since antiquity but has changed so much that scholars of Ancient Greek would have a hard time conversing in modern Greece, despite the obvious relationship. Again, translators are often used to bridge the language gap when translating ancient texts into the modern equivalent.

Other continents have ancient languages too

In Africa, Egyptian is probably the best known oldest language that we know about. Like Greek, though, ancient Egyptian as has been recorded in hieroglyphics on famous monuments like the Pyramids has disappeared and is no longer a living language. In fact, modern Egypt uses Arabic as its official language, another very important old language.

Over in the Americas, some of the oldest languages are Aztec, Mayan, and Inca. Again, there may be older languages still spoken today, yet their speakers never developed writing, so their origin is shrouded in the jungle mist.

Conclusion on World’s Oldest Language

There are several contenders for the world’s oldest living languages although no one will ever really know which of them is the oldest. Making sense of ancient hieroglyphics and written texts have become a specialized translation skill. Old language translators are few and far between. Ancient language translators must first learn the language they are studying, then and only then can they translate the ancient writing so that it can be read and studied by everyone else. Even not so ancient languages like Old English need translators of their own. Chaucer’s bawdy tales, for instance, need translating by old English sentence translators, so the words and phrases of Old English can be understood and enjoyed by today’s English speakers.

Spanish is one of the world’s most important languages. It is spoken in Spain, of course, but perhaps, more importantly, it is spoken from the Rio Grande right down to Patagonia in Central and South America and right out into the Caribbean. In addition to that, it is now the second most important language in the U.S. While many Spanish people can speak English well, this familiarity with another language tends to be lacking through Latin America. Many native Spanish speakers seem to have difficulties in learning English as a second language. Perhaps this is a consequence in South America in particular that there is very little contact with people who speak anything other than Spanish, apart from a very few tourist hotspots.

Jobs for those who speak Spanish

This presents a very good opportunity for Spanish speaking jobs. They may be jobs for Spanish people themselves who are bilingual or Spanish speaking job opportunities for those who are able to speak Spanish as a second language well.
An example of the latter is that of a Spanish language translator. Any business or government agency that has a lot of dealings with Spanish speakers, whether these are in the U.S. or Latin America, will need to translate to and from Spanish. Spanish translator jobs are less numerous in continental Europe, although Spain and its satellite islands (the Balearics and the Canaries) enjoy a huge number of English speaking tourists every year and this is where translation is an important requirement;

Spanish Teachers – A job opportunity for Spanish people

Teaching Spanish as a foreign language is one job that Spanish speakers, whether they are native speakers, or fluent second language speakers, will find plenty of opportunities in the United States because so many people do speak Spanish there. Europeans who want to learn Spanish may go to evening classes or as adult learners in colleges across Europe. A knowledge of Spanish helps people to enjoy their experience visiting Spain or anywhere in Latin America and also to appreciate the rich heritage of Spanish literature.
Anyone who decides to visit the huge South American continent is well advised to learn some Spanish as in most places away from the main cities few people will speak anything other than their own native indigenous language e.g. Quechua, as well as Spanish.
The only disconcerting thing about learning Spanish is that it is often spoken in a hazard to understand the regional dialect. If you were to visit Nicaragua, in Central America, for example, it will be near impossible understanding the Spanish of ordinary Nicaraguans! By contrast, Colombians and Mexicans often speak easier to understand Spanish.

Spanish Interpreters

There are Spanish interpreter jobs in tourist centres and in some government agencies where Spanish as a foreign language is spoken a lot. For example, ion many U.S. public hospitals it is vital to have a few Spanish interpreters available in case there is a need for diagnosis and treatment options to be discussed with Spanish speaking patients.

Namaste! With one of the largest populations on Earth, a billion strong, India is full of fascinating and often perplexing and contradictory facets. Indians have moved to every corner of the globe. They are truly global citizens, but most have a place in their hearts for their homeland and Indian art and culture.

India is full of superlatives: it is big geographically; its history spans the centuries; its literature, religions, languages, art, cuisine and culture are second to none in complexity and richness. It would take years of academic study to learn even a smidgeon of the history and cultural heritage of India, but as a casual visitor to the sub-continent, you cannot fail to be impressed by everything you come across. Although an attempt to master India’s main national lingua franca, Hindi, will mean you win friends and smiles wherever you go, you will find that many Indians will speak English, often as well as you!

You will find it easy to get into conversation in often the most unlikely places, like the platform of a railway station or a humble village restaurant. These present opportunities to learn about Indian society and culture at close hand.

Many Indians will have relatives overseas or will have spent time working, or studying abroad themselves. Wherever you travel in India, from the hot and humid South to the mountains of the Himalayas and the Ganges basin, you will everywhere be reminded of the history of Indian culture.

Learning the Hindi Language

Hindi (मानक हिन्दी) is one of India’s two official languages, although there are literally dozens of regional languages across the sub-continent. Most Indians speak their own language or dialect and Hindi and many also speak English, India’s other official language, too.

There is no easy way to learn Hindi unless you are brought up in India or amongst one of the many international communities of Indians in the international diaspora. Linguistically, Hindi shares an affinity with other Indo-Aryan languages like Punjabi and Urdu and like these languages has its roots in Sanskrit. It is more remotely related to other Indo-European and Indo-Iranian languages like Farsi, Tajik, Pashto, even English.

Hindi has its own unique script, Devanagari, which you will see all over India. It looks nothing like Latin script, though! There is no easy way how to learn Hindi easily as it means learning the spoken language as well as the written one.

Development of science and technology in India

After independence, the development of science and technology in India was swiftly promoted by Jawaharlal Nehru. The first Indian Institute of Technology was established in 1951 in West Bengal. Technological development in India has since gone ahead in leaps and bounds. India accounts for 10% of Asia’s spending on research and development on science and technology, although it still lags behind the spending of developed countries.

There are now many advances in the latest technology in India, such as developments in nanotechnology. In 2017, it was reported that India was ranked third in the world in this field after the U.S. and China.

Different Indian festivals

Although the most important religion in India is the Hindu religion, in fact there are many other religions scattered across the country. Each of these religions has its own unique and often colourful festivals. If you visit India, you will certainly want to experience at least one of them! Here are some of the major festivals of India.

Diwali

Of all the important festivals in India, Diwali must be the best known. It’s also called tghe Festival of Light and celebrates the triumph of good over evil. In most parts of India and in many other countries where there are substantial numbers of Hindus. Diwali spans several days of festivities. You can tell when Diwali is about to happen because homes and businesses will be stocking up on all manner of lights and other decorations like flowers.

Holi

A list of Hindu festivals wouldn’t be complete without Holi. Like Diwali it is celebrated in slightly different ways across India because of the different ways the holy Hindu scripts, the Bhagavad Vita are interpreted. It is also called the Festival of Colours.

Eid Ul Fitr

Ramadan is not a Hindu festival as such, but a Moslem period every year of abstinence. For a month, Indian Moslems and Moslems everywhere around the world abstain from food, drink, smoking and sex a. It is a time that Moslems remind themselves about patience and humility and their relationship with God. The end of Ramadan is marked by Eid Ul Fitr, the most important festival on the Moslem calendar.

Historical places in India

With hundreds of years of recorded history, it stands to reason that there is a legacy of historical monuments of India scattered across the country. Some of these date back to the pre-Hindu and Buddhist era and others to the many different empires that have ruled the sub-continent through the ages, but most famous historical places in India relate to the predominant Hindu religion and culture.

Probably the holiest of India’s historical places is the city of Varanasi by the Ganges. It is known as India’s ‘oldest living city.’ Varanasi is principally a place of spiritualism and pilgrimage for devout Hindus and a visit to the city is a reminder of the huge importance and significance that India’s most important river is to its people.

The Taj Mahal is probably the single most well known historical monument of India, at least outside India. It is not a Hindu monument, but this magnificent palace was built in the Moghul era by Emperor Shah Jahan as a testament of his love for the Empress.

The Golden Temple in Amritsar in the Punjab, is a beautiful Sikh temple and a testament to the creed of hospitality of Indian Sikhs.

Indian Food

Few people have never tried Indian food. Indians from all over the country have taken their rich range of cuisine with them to delight the palates of hungry and discerning restaurant goers all over the world; India is best known for its huge range of spices, herbs, vegetables and fruits which have been used to give Indian food its distinctive flavour and texture;

Indian meals are traditionally based on rice, but this is usually replaced by chapattis and roti in the North where wheat is the most common grain.

Most Hindu and Buddhist disges tend to be vegetarian based, but lamb, goat, fish and chicken are used depending on what is locally available;

Main meals may be accompanied by tea (chai) or yoghurt based fruit drinks like lassi. Indian sweets and desserts are understandably famous and often very brightly coloured!

Conclusion

Hopefully, this brief introduction to one of the world’s great cultures is enough to whet your appetite. From Bollywood to Indian food, Hindu festivals to historical monuments, you can guarantee that a visit to India will be an exhaustingly absorbing experience! Even if you only remember to say “Namaste,” an attempt to learn India’s most important language, Hindi, will be richly rewarded as an insight to Indian art, culture and religion as well as the modern life of an emerging regional superpower, and don’t forget The Migration Translators offers fast, efficient, Hindi translations of any documents you need translating to or from India’s most important language.