culture

Smoke in front of a man, with remnants of firecrackers on the ground

Why a medical interpreter was surprised to see Vietnamese immigrant patients at California hospitals around Lunar New Year

Culture

In Vietnam, seeing a doctor around the new year is unthinkable. But cultures can change. Here’s why Sonny Lê had a busy holiday week.

Idris Elba

Why Idris Elba is not ‘too street’ to be James Bond

Culture
mariachi

LA’s master mariachi tailor says sewing started out like a game for him

Culture
Safi Haso, about 70 years old, from Girik village of Kobani. "We are probably the last generation that has tattoos," she says. "All Kurdish women had them." In addition to facial, hand and neck tattoos, Haso has tattooed her own breast with circles around

These Kurdish refugee women are proud owners of facial tattoos

Culture
A student of Khmer descent learns Kinh language (the official Vietnamese language) at the Lac Hoa Primary School in Soc Trang province.

The language apocalypse is coming, and many tongues are already all but dead

Culture
The World

Veterans display their wars through ink and art

Culture

A tattoo often comes with a story. And with many American veterans unable or unwilling to tell their stories in words, a pair of veterans have started collecting the stories behind the tattoos to help people understand the wars they fought.

An Iranian couple rests in a park in central Tehran.

More young Iranian couples are living together before marriage

Culture

Many young Iranian couples are choosing to live together before marriage, and the rise in such “white marriages” has Iranian officials worried. But there are also some good reasons why young Iranians don’t want to tie the knot.

Fan death theories are so ubiquitous they've turned up as logos on t-shirts.

Why every Korean kid knows not to keep the fan on over night

Culture

There’s a superstition that Korean parents tell their kids: If you go to sleep with an electric fan running in your room, you might die.

Hardeep Singh Kohli - Comedian, Writer, Presenter

Sikh photographers go beyond beards and turbans with their portraits

Culture

The men in Naroop Singh Jhoot and Amit Amin’s photo series, “The Singh Project,” all have three things in common: turbans, beards and the middle name Singh. Yet as the photos show, their personalities — and looks — are extremely diverse.

The phrase ‘Wha gwan’ (whaa gwaan) means ‘what’s going on’ in Jamaican Patois. The spelling varies but the meaning does not change.

Pidgin, patois, slang, dialect, creole — English has more forms than you might expect

Culture

There’s a growing body of English literature that isn’t written in standard English at all, but rather different dialects and vernaculars. So when does a vernacular language become a language of its own?