A bit of culture shock...

I realized during two of my classes this past week that no matter where you go in the world there is national pride. One of my classes is about the history of the Spanish language. We discussed how the modern language is continuously evolving, especially today with the influence of technology. More and more, English words are being used and replacing existing words in Spanish and thus the Spanish language is being lost. The is an older gentleman in my class (Here, once people retire they go back to the university to take classes. They do receive degrees, but they are honorary; they take classes as something to do is their spare time, as a hobby of sorts) who made a comment that kind of suprised me: "I am not opposed to English, I am just in favor of the Spanish language." His view is that the language is being lost and that it is a bad thing. Kleenex is being used instead of pañuelo, parking is being used instead of estacionamiento, etc. The loss of language, acorrding to him, is a loss of culture. Once people start using English words instead of Spanish, Spain will not be the same, it will be a less culturally rich country.

Again the next day in another one of my classes I saw something similar. The class called European Theory, where we discuss the philosophy of Europe and see whether or not the European Union is in fact united. Our discussion centered on our text in which the author makes the point that in terms of cultual customs, morals, philosophy, the United States is identical to the European Union. One girl in my class strongly disagreed, stating that the U.S. is completely different from Spain and that it is in no way like the rest of Europe. According to her, the U.S. has a different government, does not have a royal family, and in general is just on a completely different level from Spain. The professor had to point out that the author was discussing Europe and not just Spain, and that the U.S. is as similar to Spain in economy, politics, culture as Spain is to Great Britain or Germany.

These comments were just something that struck me as interesting. The first conversation led to another where we discussed how patriotism in the United States is not the same as national pride here. In Spain, we discussed, people do not have so much a national pride as they do a regional pride. They identify themselves first by which region of Spain they are from. This is especially true when it comes to people from Catalunya and the Basque region; they try to keep with their regional differences, especially when it comes to language. Spainish people in general do not feel the same pride for their country as Americans do. Their regional celebrations tend to have more of an importance than their national day does- for example, people in Castellon take a week off of work and school to celebrate a festival called Las Fiestas de La Magdalena, where they celebrate the founding of the city. People in the U.S. acknowledge where they are from, but when you ask where they are from they will say America; being American is more important than where you are from.

These conversations got me thinking about my nationality and my place in my city, state, country and the world. It made me realize that we Americans in general, as a whole people, fail to be as globally aware as people in other countries. I know that that is a huge overstatement and generalization, but on the whole, I think that it is fair to make that statement. I think that the general thought of Americans is that our country is one of the global powerhouses and as such we are entitled to focus only on our country. Why should be be force to learn another language besides English? Why should we be interested in the politics of Serbia or Sweden. All of the people that I have met from countries in the EU are required to learn languages outside of their mother tongue. For them, Spanish is their fourth language. You´re not normal here if you only know how to speak just one language. You are required to learn in school other languages fluently and they have Erasmus here that makes it easier to travel to study in another country and prefect your abilities in another language.

I feel like that there are these little things that make me stand out here. Standing out is not a bad thing, but I feel like I am becoming more aware of how little I know and how much I have to learn this semester.