Essay On Cultural Assimilation

Assimilation: I feel that through cultural assimilation, I have lost some aspects to the Vietnamese traditional culture. By adapting to the Canadian culture, I have noticed myself and other people replacing most Vietnamese words for English. I tend to speak half and half in a sentence, and this has affected my identity as it makes me question how I will be able to preserve the Vietnamese culture in the future. I have adopted more to the Canadian language that as I grow up, I have become rusty and lost the ability to communicate in Vietnamese. One of the most known sauces to the Asian culture is fish sauce, or in Vietnamese it’s known as nước mắm. I believe that today, one of the controversial issues is how to find a fine line between whether to meet society’s needs or individual’s needs. Social acceptance is a dilemma and I think that because of cultural assimilation it has affected my identity. As a kid, I was very cautious of what food I bring to school because every

Cultural assimilation also affects my identity through my chosen birth name. Some Vietnamese people have made an effort to assimilate completely into the Canadian society by the change of their last names. For example it could be “Nguyen” to “Newman,” but most people retain their sense of ethnicity. Most Vietnamese people have a first name that is understandable or “common,” but what is not being questioned is why do we have Vietnamese names that is not legalized, but have English names that replace it? My mother gave me the Vietnamese name of Mỹ Như, but my English name is Wendy Cam. This alone shapes me a different identity (literally), and I feel that in terms of cultural assimilation, the big picture here is social acceptance. Perhaps, parents do not want their children to bear a name that society will look at weirdly, so a modified Western name is given so that it is understood easily and is accepted by