Learning Language Not Necessarily Learning Culture

by Robert Koehler on October 18, 2007

Citing an article in the Japan Times, Ampontan notes that it’s possible to learn a language and still not have a clue about the culture you’re in. Very interesting read.

{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }

1 dda October 18, 2007 at 3:15 pm: I mean, Polish, for instance, has elaborate case endings for adjectives, and even has a special one for the nominative plural of male animate nouns!

Mwahaha, if this guy is able to replicate accurately this sentence in Japanese, then the Japanese hackie’s answer Still, Japanese is the most difficult language makes sense, since the argument probably didn’t make any sense at all for him, and such a difficult sentence with so many difficult words, come on…

And let’s not get started with replacing every occurrence of Japan[ese] with Korea[n] either..

But a foreign student supporting himself as a hackie, in Korea, now that would be cool!
2 Fantasy October 18, 2007 at 5:07 pm: The AMPONTAN post is right on spot. Reminds me of Germans who speak and write excellent English – but nevertheless have a profound aversion agianst the US, not only against the Bush administration (which would be understandable, after all), but against American culture itself. Because the casual friendliness in the US is regarded as “superficial”…

These people usually like Ireland, Australia or New Zealand, though…
3 dokdoforever October 18, 2007 at 7:37 pm: An entertaining article about the Western academic Pulvers’ inability to understand the culture of his Japanese cab driver despite being fluent in Japanese. But I think Ampontan’s critique tells more about Pulvers’ general cluelessness about relating to non-linguists than something generalizable about people failing to learn foreign cultures. Pulvers would probably just as likely turn off a NY cabbie, or most people, by debating Polish male animate nouns. No doubt that language contains lots of cultural content. Look at all the different titles for various relatives in Korean – it tells you alot about 1)how important family is here, and 2)the heirarchical nature of confucian based family relations in Korea.
4 eunsung October 18, 2007 at 10:48 pm: I know a girl from YanJi who speaks native Korea, but doesn’t know who King SeJong is.
5 Fantasy October 18, 2007 at 11:45 pm: Poor thing…
6 FD October 19, 2007 at 1:43 pm: The phenomena explicated in the article could account for the genesis of many of the posts and comments on this blog.