Skip to main content
Rayan Moussallem ENGLISH 204

A comparison will be made between Lebanon and Spain which are two fascinating countries with lots of similarities. Lebanon and Spain are two Mediterranean countries. Despite the fact that each one of those countries are situated from either side of the Mediterranean Sea, they share a lot of resemblances. One of them is the Mediterranean climate where there is all four seasons. Therefore, these two countries have relatively cold and snowy winters and hot summers.
First, let’s discuss about traditional dances. In Spain, the official traditional dance is the Flamenco. The flamenco is a solo dance characterized by hand clapping, percussive footwork, and intricate hand, arm, and body movements. In Lebanon, the traditional dance is the “Dabke”, Dabke combines circle dance and line dancing and is widely performed at weddings and other joyous occasions.
Moreover, Spain and Lebanon don’t share the same mother tongue. Lebanon is known to have a unique use of three main languages at the same time, sometimes in the same sentence. Lebanon primarily rely on Arabic, our mother tongue, French and English our secondary languages to make our way through. In Spain, the official language is the Spanish. Nevertheless, some regions of Spain use other dialects. We can take Catalonia as an example where Catalan is spoken. The locals actually refuse to talk in Spanish and use the Catalan as their primary language. The Spanish and the Arabic language share lots of common points. As a matter of fact, Arabic and Spanish share some words and this is due to the Arab’s 800-years-occupation of Spain. To illustrate this point we look at some simple examples: música in Spanish and mousika in Arabic (موسيقى) which means music, Alcázar in Spanish and Al Kaser (القصر) in Arabic which means palace.
Finally, Lebanon and Spain share approximately the same “food culture” which consist of sharing multiple platters. The table would be full of different small platters called “Tapas” in Spain. In Lebanon this called a “Mezza”. In both case, the food is generally very healthy and tasty.





Spain:





Lebanon:




Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Comparing Lebanon and Italy      Lebanon is the country where I have lived my whole life. It is located at the crossroads between the Arab world and the Mediterranean Basin, and as such it shares many similarities with other Mediterranean countries, like Spain, Greece and Italy . This is due to a common History those countries share, and consequently close cultures.      To start off, it would be interesting to give some basic information: according to recent statistics, Lebanon is 30 times smaller than Italy, and its population is currently 10 times less. But if we dwelve deeper into their respective cultures, we would be likely to find many similarities.   1- Language:    The Lebanese are known for being very efficient at learning languages. The average Lebanese can speak up to 3 languages: Arabic, French and English. Some are also fluent in Spanish, Italian, or German. Italians mostly speak Italian (97%), and a great majority of the population doesn't speak Englis

Intercultural Communication: Lebanon VS the United States

  Rim Karame Maryah Kulaylat April 18, 2018     Comparing         Lebanon and         the  United               States         We chose to compare Lebanon and the United states because we’ve been to both countries. It’s interesting to compare these two countries because the United States is one of the most advanced first world countries whereas Lebanon is still considered a third world country. Languages In the United States of America, the mother language is English and most people only speak this language since it’s the most dominant language in the world nowadays so it's not necessary for Americans to speak other languages. Which is interesting compared to Lebanon where there are three spoken languages: Arabic, English and French. That is because Lebanon is an Arab country therefore Arabic is the mother language spoken by all categories of people. Also, Lebanon was dominated by France for a long period of time so the French language spread t