Brazil and the United States: so different and so alike. Brazil can be compared to the United States in several aspects. Both countries have a lot of things in common; however, we can point some differences too. The first thing we’re going to discuss is the way people act in both countries. Brazil prefers collectivism, whereas the United States prefers individualism. This means that, in Brazil, they support group interaction and think it’s really important.
The United States differs from this, because they are a lot more individualistic, and believe that people shouldn’t worry about the group very much, but just themselves and family. By the way, we can notice that Brazilians are more casual, while Americans are more reserved. One obvious difference is the language and the communication. Brazilians speak Portuguese, which contains a large number of indigenous terms, particularly Tupi-Guarani; on the other hand, Americans speak English which contains numerous loan words from European and Native American.
In Brazil, the conversation style is very dynamic and often considered very noisy. In the United States; in contrast, people are usually offended by this behavior and consider it to be rude, but in Brazil, no one is offended. Besides, Brazilians tend to look at the person they’re talking to straight in the eyes. Americans; nevertheless, often feel uncomfortable with this attitude. Another difference between Brazil and the United States involves educational issues.
Education in the United States is mainly provided by the public sector, with control and funding coming from three levels: federal, state, and local; by comparison, in Brazil it’s regulated by the federal government, through the Ministry of Education, which defines the guiding principles for the organization of educational programs. Brazilian children must attend school with a minimum of 9 years; still, the school is usually inadequate. It happens because the federal government is responsible for establishing educational programs using the funding supplied by the
Government; however, they don’t invest enough money in it, especially in public education. The United States invest significant money in public education though. In spite of those differences, these two countries are quite similar in some aspects. Both countries have transplanted cultures: Portugal for Brazil and Great Britain for USA, but the process of colonization that started in Brazil differs from the process of colonization of the USA, for example. Europeans didn’t go to Brazil to live and develop the territory for their own benefit.
Actually, they went there to explore its rich natural recourses and came back home with lots of money. Talking about Politics, we can realize that they have some other things in common. Just like in Brazil, the President of the United States is the head of state and head of government. In addition, both USA and Brazil have a written constitution and their system of government are the same: they’re both democracies. A final similarity is that Brazilian and American nightlife are alike, because in both countries you can find nice songs to dance, various styles of music and very good places to have fun.
Besides, Television is one of the major mass media of the United States and they have excellent journalistic programmes and TV series; just like in Brazil. The United States are so different compared to Brazil, when you talk about people, education, language etc. Despite the differences, we can observe some similarities as well. Both of them have transplanted cultures, have a written constitution and are democracies, for example. The best thing about comparing two different countries is the research you make to learn more about specifics aspects contained in each one of them.
