Language and Ritual Differences

Recently, according to the lunar calendar, we just stepped into a new year. In the beginning of the new year, individuals in China tend to visit relevant or friends’ home to pay a new year call and set up festival lanterns. These unique but meaningful rituals together as a presentation of different cultures. In the Lunar New Year, we will say “Happy New Year” to each other, which in Pinyin, Chinese way to spell, is “Xin Nian Kuai Le”. From this perspective, I believe that even though culture may differ, the phrase which we use to wish others a great future is relatively the same.

As far as I am concerned, the Chrisms and the Spring New Year are quite similar. In the New Year, we will union with our family and have certain cuisine, such as dumpling. In the Christmas, American sometimes practice the same rituals: they reunion with family to countdown the last moment of the year and make turkeys together. In this light, in spite of the language differences, individuals within the world hold similar custom or tradition to some extent.

Indeed, Chinese say the same phrase to each other as American do, which indicates that language and culture cannot differentiate us completely. As Corona explains in the email, “Serbian people say the same thing as in English, Happy New Year written as ‘Srecna Nova Godina’”. What is different is that both in Chinese and English, we don’t have the abbreviate phrase for “happy new year”. However, I don’t think that can present the cultural peculiarities. These minute differences are same manifestation as how dialects are distinguished within China. Holistically, it is not the trivial phrase varies that demonstrate cultural distinction. For me, linguistics influence culture variances through the mean they are dispersed and practiced.