When two cultures come into contact with one another, change in culture is inevitable. When two cultures comes in contact with one another, it can go through acculturation or, assimilation. Native culture can completely change and absorb in the host culture, or, native culture can adopt few elements of host culture. Both concepts refer to the change in culture, when the dissimilarity is recognizable between the host and native culture it’s known as acculturation. And if the difference between two cultures are unrecognizable then the culture is gone through assimilation.
In acculturation process, group adopt few elements of host culture. It can be language or, clothing or, food or, customs. However, if there is still identifiable difference between host culture and native culture then the culture is gone through acculturation. In acculturation the native culture adopt few elements of host culture but, still practice few of their own elements of culture as well. So, it is not the complete adaptation of host culture or dominant culture rather, few modification in the native culture, which resulted from adaptation of host culture elements. On the other hand, assimilation is the process in which native culture go through complete change and adopt all the elements of host culture. In other words, if one can differentiate between the host culture and native culture after going through a change, then the process is known as acculturation. Whereas, if one cannot differentiate between the host culture and native culture after going through a change, the phenomenon will be called Assimilation. In assimilation process the minority culture get completely absorbed into dominant majority culture.
