Culture
Both Vietnamese and Khmer speak a Mon-Khmer language which linguistically links the 2 groups. Vietnamese in Cambodia often don't integrate well with Khmers unlike the Chinese or Cham, this could be due to the cultural difference that both groups have. Today, due to the high unemployment rate in Vietnam, many Vietnamese come to Cambodia looking for work. While many Vietnamese come to Cambodia looking for a better life, few found it. Due to Vietnam's ten year occupation of Cambodia, most Cambodians harbor a deep distrust and dislike of the Vietnamese. Intermarriage is not as often with the Khmer as the Chinese settlers. While dispersed throughout the country, many Vietnamese are concentrated in the urban areas; others are involved in traditional fishing and agricultural activities where they live in floating villages on water. Vietnamese celebrate Chinese New Year during the month of February and is one of the biggest celebrations in Cambodia. They have also introduced their religion of Cao Dai which combines Mahayana, Confucian and Catholic beliefs. There are 2 built temples in Cambodia. Religion in Vietnam has historically been largely defined by the East Asian mix of Buddhism, Confucianism, and Taoism. They are the so-called Tam Giáo, or "triple religion." Beyond Tam Giáo, Catholicism is also practiced in modern Vietnam. Vietnamese Buddhism has typically been the most popular. This fits perfectly with the "triple religion" concept, making it difficult for many Vietnamese to identify exactly which religion they practice. Besides the "triple religion", Vietnamese life was also profoundly influenced by the practice of ancestor worship, as well as native animism. Most Vietnamese, regardless of religious denomination, practice ancestor worship and have an ancestor altar at their home or business, a testament to the emphasis Vietnamese culture places on filial duty. Most Vietnamese are followers of Mahayana Buddhism unlike the Khmer who follow Theravada Buddhism. Most Vietnamese speak Vietnamese as their mother tongue and the younger kids must learn to speak Khmer to prepare themselves to enter a school.
Read more about this topic: Vietnamese Cambodian
Famous quotes containing the word culture:
“I am writing to resist the view that Europe and civilization are going to Hell. If I am being “crucified for an idea”Mthat is, the coherent idea around which my muddles accumulated—it is probably the idea that European culture ought to survive, that the best qualities of it ought to survive along with whatever cultures, in whatever universality. Against the propaganda of terror and the propaganda of luxury, have you a nice simple answer?”
—Ezra Pound (1885–1972)
“Here is this vast, savage, howling mother of ours, Nature, lying all around, with such beauty, and such affection for her children, as the leopard; and yet we are so early weaned from her breast to society, to that culture which is exclusively an interaction of man on man,—a sort of breeding in and in, which produces at most a merely English nobility, a civilization destined to have a speedy limit.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“... there are some who, believing that all is for the best in the best of possible worlds, and that to-morrow is necessarily better than to-day, may think that if culture is a good thing we shall infallibly be found to have more of it that we had a generation since; and that if we can be shown not to have more of it, it can be shown not to be worth seeking.”
—Katharine Fullerton Gerould (1879–1944)