Language Awareness
Introducing Celebrating Cultures, a project conducted by Mahitha Mohan and Zoya Hasnat, sophomores here at Vista Ridge High School. The purpose of this project is to spread awareness on different aspects of cultures. They are first starting off with the language aspect of culture. Language is the way of communication between various groups of people. It helps create diverse relationships/communities with each one containing unique forms of speech and writing. There are about 7,000 languages within the 195 countries that exist in today’s world. It is important not to judge other languages based on their pronunciation and accents (Linguistic racism). What might sound one way to one person can have a different perspective in another language. Since English is a common lingua franca, they decided to interview a few people who spoke languages other than English such as Thai, Turkish, Igbo, Russian, and Portuguese!
Religious Awareness
Celebrating Cultures then worked on religion as their next aspect of culture. Religion is the faith or worship in one or multiple superhuman powers, this includes god/gods. Each religion has its own practices, customs, values, and places of worship. Religion largely reflects how a person thinks of the world and is important to consider when thinking about how a person of a certain faith might think. It can be easy to judge other religions and the people who practice them just because your religion might be different from theirs. However we as a society shouldn’t close off things just because we aren’t used to them. Being aware of the other religions helps us put ourselves in each others’ shoes in trying to learn more about the people around us. There are about 10,000 distinct religions found around the world. Religious awareness is important, so they decided to interview those who practiced religions such as Judaism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Buddhism, and Taoism.
Cultural Food Awareness
Celebrating Culture’s final aspect of culture for the first semester was food! Food is anything that can be consumed by an organism to gain necessary nutrients such as proteins, fats, vitamins, and carbohydrates. How does this relate back to culture? Every food comes from a place of origin and is passed down from one generation to the next. Trying out different meals from other cultures can not only expand our taste but also give us an insight on the many delicious foods that can be found globally. It is okay to have picky taste but it is not okay to judge a food just because it is different from what we are used to. Everyone has their own opinions, but we encourage you to be more open to international foods. Who knows, you might just discover your new favorite comfort food. To bring awareness to the unique foods of different cultures and help you get started on your new international food hunt, the team interviewed those who wanted to bring more recognition to their favorite foods such as Kimchi Jeon(Korea), Shawarma(Mediterranean), Iskender(Turkish), Biryani(South Asian/Persian), Tzatziki(Mediterranean). Keep in touch for the last three aspects of culture coming up this semester. Follow their Instagram celebratingculture_atx for more info.
