Japanese Culture Vs American Culture

Our planet consists of many different groups and cultures. Cultures across the globe interact differently on basic societal, religious, and political levels. The way that these cultures differ is important to understanding the past, present, and future of our time on Earth. Contrasting cultural language, social interactions, families, and educational institutions all play an impactful role in differentiating one vulture from the other. Japan in particular diverges in those main points to the United States in many ways. Without leaving out communication methods like Mass Media, Verbal and Non Verbal communication, and religion, these are also all major factors of a developed culture. Although those points are significant, the foundation of all

There is a sense of pride in it that their country is native Japanese. America is a melting pot filled with hundreds of different languages varying from Japanese to Indonesian. The way that the Japanese spoken and written language is set up is different in many ways to the English style of language. English consists of some sounds that don’t exist in Japan such as “c”, “f”, “l”, “q”, “v”, and “x”. When the Japanese want to speak these sounds they have to use Japanese syllables that sound the same ("Speaking and Writing”). The Japanese use 100 distinct syllables to speak and write. These syllables are never accented like they are in English. One of the greatest differences between English and Japanese is the way they speak and say words formally and informally. In English our tone of voice and manners may change more than our words we say but, in Japanese culture they legitimately use different words entirely in different situations ("Speaking and Writing”). For example a person will use a different word for father when speaking to him rather than to someone else. This is major because there are two different types of context then between certain people. There is the same type of idea in America but our words don’t change, external things do more than

Written language came after spoken language. The Japanese written language consists of a technique called Kanji. Kanji is a form of written language in which the symbols don’t just stand for sounds and words but they are also pictures. It’s like a pictograph system if you want it to be, or just words spelled out. This method was adopted from the Chinese by the Japanese some time ago ("Speaking and Writing”). Our alphabet is adopted and derived through Greek and Latin terms which contain 26 sounds. By the time students are in Elementary school in Japan they’re expected to know 881 Kanji and an additional 1000 for a total of around 1850 by the time they graduate high school. It takes a long time to learn the language unlike the 26 sounds all elementary kids learn in kindergarten here in the United States. The Japanese ran into problems though. The pictograms couldn’t account for the multiple syllable words that the Japanese language had. ("Speaking and Writing”). So what they did is develop a system called Kana to indicate sound without meaning, much like our alphabet. Since the Japanese language is usually written vertically in columns running from right to left, what is the back of an English book is the beginning of a Japanese one. Clearly, learning the language of Japan and mastering it is a very important part of the childhood and education of the youth of Japan. Their language holds