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

time my parents cook a meal that usually is with fish sauce on the side, they would always give me a look and worry that if I bring the food, I wouldn’t be able to bring the sauce because it is “smelly.” As I grow older, I have been exposed to different smells and sight of food that I worry less of what I bring out to eat. I guess you can say that I’ve become more proud or confident of Vietnamese tradition.

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

society.
Multiculturalism: Multiculturalism has affected my identity in the way that I am able to keep some of the Vietnamese tradition while adapting to the Western culture. An would be the food that I eat. I am able to maintain the traditional dishes that the Vietnamese culture cooks like bánh xèo and maintain a balance of the American foods such as fries, hamburgers and pizza. I notice that Canadians are mostly focused on quickly getting their food and eating so that they can move on to the next task, and this affects me because in my culture, Vietnamese treat mealtimes as a time for social interaction. I feel that as I get older, I adapt more to the Canadian culture and lose a bit of my tradition. How else multiculturalism affects me is that I get to meet people of different ethnicity/nationality. An example would