All people one way or another are carriers of the culture of a particular country. However, not everyone realizes the importance of this phenomenon, perceiving themselves, their upbringing and worldview separately from their country and society, which is fundamentally wrong.
The concept of local color
This expression originally came to our lexicon as a literary term, which means a stylistic device used to describe the life and customs of any area. However, now the phrase "local flavor" is often used as a kind of metaphor, not only in literary works, but also in everyday speech.
In tourism
Today, the concept of "local flavor" in the minds of most people is associated with tourism activity. Thus, they often try to describe the individual characteristics of each country or region, to tell what makes a certain area stand out, what are its characteristic features. For a tourist, local color is the features inherent in the area, features of architectural buildings, national life, everyday life of the population,characteristic cultural features. All this helps to feel the atmosphere of the country as much as possible, to better understand its people.
National color
Often speaking about what the local flavor means, people turn to national characteristics. In fact, the words "local" and "national" now seem to be a kind of synonyms. And indeed, coming to any country, a person is faced with a truly exciting variety of local color.
So, in Germany we can see interesting houses, beautiful national costumes, hear music and songs characteristic only for this country. With the mention of France, many people associate with national dishes such as croissants and julienne, French fashion, the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, French kings and other features that characterize the national flavor of this country. Italy is famous for its music, everyone knows the cities of Milan and Venice, whose architecture is an incredibly valuable component of the world cultural heritage. Speaking of Great Britain, one cannot fail to mention William Shakespeare and Oscar Wilde, the English monarchy, the famous Big Ben. All these are important parts of the culture of these countries, which represent their local flavor.
A little exotic
With the development of tourism, more and more people are paying attention to exotic countries. And this is a completely justified interest, because the culture, for example, of African countries is strikinglydiffers from ours, the Eurasian one. For example, the local flavor of Cambodia can be of great interest to lovers of extreme tourism and exotics in general. One of the wonders of the world is located here - the ancient city of Angkor with truly incredible temple complexes that are more than one thousand years old, as well as other beautiful architectural structures that amaze with their antiquity and grandeur.
The nature of exotic countries is also an integral part of their local flavor. Ancient crystal clear lakes, impenetrable tropical forests, the rarest animals and plants of various colors and shades - all this appears to the tourist in all its splendor, leaving an indelible mark on the memory.
Color of Russia
But for us, Russians, our homeland is the sweetest of all. Our country is a repository of all kinds of cultures. The multinationality of the country makes it unique in terms of the variety of monuments of literature, architecture and cuisine. Tourists coming to Russia are amazed at the huge number of magnificent churches in its European part, the vast forests of Siberia, the beauty of the mountain landscape. However, it is worth looking to the south, and we can already see completely different manifestations of local color: mosques, villages and much more.
The life of the Chukchi, Caucasians and Slavs differs so much that it is simply impossible to describe all the differences. The local flavor of our country is captured in the works of Russian authors such as Alexander Pushkin, Mikhail Lermontov, Bulat Okudzhava. In their writings, they described the diversity of Russian nature, lifedifferent peoples, up to the peculiarities of the worldview of their representatives, religious traits. Being at the crossroads of Eurasian and European cultures, Russia can surprise with its national flavor even an experienced tourist who has seen more than a dozen countries.
Meaning of globalization
With the development of mutual integration of countries, there is a noticeable smoothing of the features of different countries. Now more and more cultures are mixing with each other, as a result of which there is a loss of local color.
Some countries are trying to fight this phenomenon. Thus, Japan, being a closed country for a long time, conducts a rigorous selection of applicants for a residence permit. So the country's authorities are trying to preserve their national features. Japan is an incredibly distinctive country, from cuisine (sushi, teriyaki and ramen are world famous dishes) to literature (hoku is a type of Japanese poetry). This is paying off: even the modern architectural style of Japan is significantly different from other countries.
But many states, on the contrary, follow the policy of globalization, encouraging the cultural integration of other peoples into their culture. An excellent example of this is European integration. Residents of the European Union can move freely within Europe, which inevitably leads to a mixture of their national color.
So what does local flavor mean? This is a combination of features and characteristics of the life and culture of the country. And in modern society, the most important task is to preserve this color, because now the diversity of everythingcultural layer is under threat like never before.
