Cultural Geography

     Today in class we talked about Cultural characteristics, which describes what the people in your culture do in their everyday life. For example; Language, Religion, Ethnic Heritage. First is language. The Arabic language unites the Arab world (middle east). The Spanish language unites the Hispanic world. Brazil is the only South American Nation which does not primarily speak Spanish. Brazil is the only South American Nation which does not primarily speak Spanish. Brazilians speak Portuguese. Canada is a Bilingual nation, French and English are its official languages. The US has no official language. Switzerland and has 4 official languages; German, French, Italian, Romansh, and there are little conflict between these groups. Worldwide English is considered a "Bridge" language used for most international business transaction. Next was Ethnic Heritage. In Yugoslavia there are many ethnic groups; Serbs, Croats, Bosnians, Albal. After strong leadership died out and a civil war occurred. It was split from one country into five. In Rwanda and Burundi in Africa, there are two ethnic groups; The Tutsis and The Hutus. The Tutsis are sometimes dominant in Burundi and they persecute the Hutus. Then when the Hutus dominate Rwanda they persecute the Tutsis. There is constant war. During the 100 day period between April and July 1994, 500,000 - 1,000,000 Tutsis (70% of them) were killed by Hutu majority. The religious demographic of Burundi is 3% Muslim and 91% Christian. However the US and Switzerland are peacefully merged with multiple ethnic groups in their territory. Korea and Japan have primarily one ethnic group. We learned that religion can be a unifying and disunifying force.