Cultural Differences Between America And Usa

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College is a different experience than high school. A large difference between high school and college is the people you will meet while attending college. An interesting group you will meet in college are international students. These international students come from all over the world and have their own unique story to tell. For my project I interviewed Jholdi Brooks, a native of the Dominican Republic, who has spent half his life in the Dominican and the other half in the United States. When interviewing Jholdi my first question I asked him was what is living in the Dominican Republic compared to living in the United States. He says a major difference in Santo Domingo, where he was born, and Monroe County, where he lives now, is some …show more content…

The answer that Jholdi gave me is interesting because it falls under one Hofstede’s Value Dimensions: Masculinity. In both cultures of the Dominican Republic and the United States men are taught to be the head of groups and not have jobs that will show femininity. Men are also taught not to cry in both of these cultures because that will show weakness. Hofstede describes masculinity as having a society based around achievement, heroism, and assertiveness which has been highly documented in each of these countries’ history. The key difference Jholdi says about living in the Dominican Republic and the United States is the language barrier. In the Dominican Republic they speak Spanish different our English in the United States. He says it took around three to four years to assimilate to the English language. Although it took him some time to learn the English language he finds it rewarding because he is now bilingual. Another reason he feels rewarding living in the United States is all the mixture of cultures because in Santo Domingo there is basically no other culture besides the culture Spain and Haiti have …show more content…

In other terms he had culture shock. What he means by this is that the Dominican Republic in itself is a country who is not necessarily isolationist, but has not been touched by other cultures compared to the United States. The Dominican Republic does not have a great amount of co-culture groups: the main religion, Roman Catholicism has a 95% follower rate and nearly 100% of the population speaks Spanish. Compare that to the United States where there is no official language because there are so many different ethnic groups and also has a wide diversity of religious groups as

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