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: