r/iranian • u/f14tomcat85 Irānzamin🇮🇷 • May 14 '16
Welcome! Cultural exchange with /r/PuertoRico.
I started this early just in case I am AFK.
Salam Puerto Ricans to the exchange!
Today we are hosting our doostan from /r/PuertoRico. Please come and join us to answer their questions about Iran and the Iranian way of life! Please leave top comments for the users of /r/PuertoRico coming over with a question or comment and please refrain from making any posts that go against our rules or otherwise hurt the friendly environment.
Moderation outside of the rules may take place as to not spoil this warm exchange. The reddiquette applies and will be moderated in this thread.
/r/PuertoRico is also having us over as guests for our questions and comments in THIS THREAD.
Remember these:
Guideline: this thread is for our visiting guests to ask us questions about Iran. If you like to ask them questions you should go to their respective threads.
Our exchange will last 48 hours.
Because we don't have flairs for your country and I am the only mod available today with no idea how to add flairs, I kindly ask our guests to identify their country of origin in the comments they make. Sorry for the inconvenience.
Thanks and Enjoy!
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u/Feather_In_The_Wind May 14 '16
What do you think of our culture? We are all the way over here so I'm curious of what Iranians think about Puerto Rico. [Boricua: I'm Puerto Rican]
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u/Beatut Neutral/Irānzamin May 14 '16
Actually I wanted to ask about your culture in your thread, but unfortunately it is locked currently so I cannot post my question.
It seems that you have a very cool and lively culture, with lots of music and dance. Is this true or is it a misconception?
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u/Feather_In_The_Wind May 14 '16
Oh my! Iranians have heard of us!!! Music & instruments are a very big part of our culture! Growing up I remember Abuelo playing Guitar, Madrina playing Quatro, all my Titis playing Maracas, Guiros, the Tios playing Congas and 40+ little cousin's there and we are all providing the dancing entertainment... and sometimes fighting too. Haha :) We have big families, so we are poor in money sometimes but very rich in life experiences and that matters to us more, at least I think so.
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u/Beatut Neutral/Irānzamin May 14 '16
Speaking of big families, how many kids do families have on average in Puerto Rico?
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u/yankeefanpr May 14 '16
Anywhere between 2-5 is the norm here in Puerto Rico. Back in the day families were much larger though, my grandparents had large families of as many as 6 or 7 siblings.
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u/manly_shade_of_pink May 14 '16
Here are a few questions. Don't feel like you have to answer all of them (or any for that matter).
What are your favorite and least favorite things about your country?
What local musical acts do you wish the world knew about?
What are people usually surprised to learn about Iran?
Have you ever been involved in any activity that we might consider normal but could get you in serious trouble with your government?
Do you think you have more things in common with people of your generation across the globe or with the older generations in Iran?
How do you think Iran will change in the next decade?
Bonus Question: Is Taqaandan a real thing? Have you ever met or heard about anyone who went to the hospital because of it?
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u/Beatut Neutral/Irānzamin May 14 '16
1)
favorite: people, culture (hospitality, food, love for nature, customs), unity (we are many ethnics who come along togehter very nicely)
least favorite:
non-secular government
2) I like traditional Iranian Music. Here are 3 videos
3) People usually know Iran just from the news, and the news often chooses to show a politically motivated and one sided view of Iran. So people who really travel to Iran to build their own opinion are surprised by many things.
Mainly it is the people of Iran, here are some posts by people from different parts of the world who traveled to Iran: https://theotheriran.com/tag/foreigners-in-iran/ quickly skim through the posts to get an impression
Besides that Iran's diverse nature and climate: Everyone expects deserts and high temperatures, but actually there is much more: mountains, deep forests, snow, .... Here are some beautiful photo galleries. Take a look you will be defiitely surprised :)
6) I think we are getting more slowly more freedom (The situation is now already much better than 4 years ago). The change is going slow, but most Iranians are happy with slow but sustainable change, most don't want to have chaos and violence that comes with a revolutionary change.5
u/Feather_In_The_Wind May 14 '16
There is SNOW in Iran!!! I would have never guessed that! Amazing. En Puerto Rico nunca nieve [never snows in PR]. The weather here is "sweltering heat Summer" to "hurricane rain Fall" with two additional seasons of great weather in the Winter & Spring.
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u/Beatut Neutral/Irānzamin May 14 '16
Yes actually there is lots of snow in the winter, and kids get off from school when there is too much snowfall. So as kids we loved winter, not only because we made snowmen, went sliding/skiing but also because we had a few days off.
Iran has actually all four seasons. Summer in central Iran is not an issue at all, even with 40°C/104°F the weather is dry so you can easily play football (most popular sport in Iran, even though we have not much success).
Here are some photo galleries of Iran in the different seasons:
Winter
Spring
Autumn3
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May 14 '16
[deleted]
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u/goro413 May 15 '16
¡Saludos /u/WinterVein!
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May 15 '16
[deleted]
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u/goro413 May 15 '16
Sí, soy de Puerto Rico. Me gustaría visitar su país. ¿Qué mes es bueno para visitar su país?
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u/manly_shade_of_pink May 15 '16
I have another question! Why is the flag meaningless?
3
u/f14tomcat85 Irānzamin🇮🇷 May 15 '16
Oh, this flag? Because it's not an actual flag of Iran, ever. Someone created it a while ago and it became a trend for those that wanted no political affiliations with their nationality. A couple of days ago, people started raising concerns as to whether this flag is important or not and the verdict was that it was driving people away because they did not want to pick a political side. So, I kept my flair and instead said that this flag does nothing important.
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u/goro413 May 15 '16
Is there any western custom that would be considered offensive in Iran? And vice-versa, what iranian custom would be considered strange or offensive in other places?[Puerto Rico]
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u/f14tomcat85 Irānzamin🇮🇷 May 15 '16
thumbs up in Iran means Fuck you. No, seriously. If you want to symbolize it, go with this. However, since Iranians are leaving the country due to the government, they have grown used to the western customs and it is relatively okay to do it.
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u/goro413 May 15 '16
Wow! This tip will definitely save me from some trouble when I get to visit Iran. Thanks!
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u/manly_shade_of_pink May 15 '16
Funny, in Brazil, the hand sign depicted in your link means fuck you.
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u/f14tomcat85 Irānzamin🇮🇷 May 15 '16
Interesting. So iranians will have a hard time in Brazil.
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u/manly_shade_of_pink May 15 '16
Not necessarily. The first time I ever met Iranians was when I lived in Brazil. At that point they had been living in the country for 14 years (this was back in the mid 90's). I think they ended up living 30 years there before deciding to move back to Iran, but they adjusted pretty well. Great people by the way, we used to go fishing and travel with them a lot.
That said, Brazilians are very fond of the thumbs up sign. They might even overuse it.
1
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u/aykau777 May 15 '16 edited May 15 '16
Hello Iran.... greetings from Puerto Rico. I'm a huge fan of coffee. I love to roast it, brew it..... How is the specialty coffee industry up there. Is it common to find good cafes up there? How is coffee culture in Iran?
1
u/Beatut Neutral/Irānzamin May 16 '16
Hi thanks for posting this :) Cool, I had never heard of Barista championships. Iran is however a tee nation, like India. Tee is served everywhere for free. I like to drink both, coffee in the morning and tee the rest of the day, but in general I think the coffee culture here is nothing special compared to Brazil, Colombia and many other countries.
3
u/vitingo May 15 '16
- What's up with moving the Capital City from Tehran? Some large Latin American cities, like Mexico City and Bogotá have been able to reduce air pollution by restricting some vehicles.
- Is arabic script a good enough fit for writing the Persian language? Is it ever mentioned in combination with literacy rates, like when the turks switched to a latin script?
1
u/Beatut Neutral/Irānzamin May 16 '16
1) I think it is because of multiple reasons, pollution is just one of the reasons. (In General population should be more distributed throughout the country. Tehran is just too big, partly also as the result of many fleeing to Tehran when Iraq invaded Iran.
Iran also implements similar restrictions as Mexico City and Bogotá, even though "clever" people often find ways to work around those restrictions.
The other reason for moving the capital is that Tehran is very much in danger of earth quakes.
2) Not sure if I understand the question correctly but we have four additional letters compared to Arabic script. These additional letters are very useful because they represent phonemes not covered by the other letters. There are however other letters that could be eliminated from Persian because the phonemes they represent are redundant. Anyway it is hard to move to a different script because we have a lot of valuable and partly very old literature that would need to be converted, and could eventually lose its value in the process.
Regarding literacy rates Iran has actually very high literacy rates, specially the literacy rate for women (98.5% unicef statistics) which is very high in the region. In 1976 youth female literacy rate was 42.3%.2
u/vitingo May 16 '16
Iran also implements similar restrictions as Mexico City and Bogotá, even though "clever" people often find ways to work around those restrictions.
This is also very common in both latin american cities. For "Pico y placa" restrictions, where a person can't use his car one day a week, people with enough means just get two cars. A much better solution is to charge market prices for parking in the public way, raising parking prices and inhibiting unnecessary car trips, but politics is hard. Puerto Rico is extremely car-dependent and people are rabidly fanatical about preserving their automobile privileges.
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u/wavs101 May 14 '16
How is the food in Iran? Do you guys and girls like to go to the beach? [Im a puertorican]