Quarter 4: Week 6, Post A

I am continuing to notice more and more cultural differences within my book, A Thousand Splendid Suns. This week I particularly noticed a difference when it comes to languages among different ethnic groups. In Afghanistan, there are two major languages spoken by Afghan citizens: Pashto and Farsi. The split between people who speak Pashto and people who speak Farsi is fairly even. However, most people in Afghanistan know how to speak both. Because there is such an even split between the dialects, it's almost necessary to know both of them. Many people, even children, can easily switch back and forth between the two. For example, Tariq knows both Pashto and Farsi. Even though he grew up learning Pashto and knows it much better, he has no problem communicating with Laila in Farsi. "Though Tariq and his parents were ethnic Pashtuns, they spoke Farsi when Laila was around for her benefit, even though Laila more or less understood their native Pashto" (117). Clearly, Laila and Tariq, although still young, each understand the other's native language fairly well. The fact that so many Afghan citizens are "bi-lingual" like Laila and Tariq is something very different from the U.S. We obviously have many people who speak multiple languages, but it's much less common than in Afghanistan. Most Americans speak English. And although there are several other languages spoken in our country, none are even close to the same importance and popularity as English. No one ethnic group is so dominant in America that their language rivals English.