Learning a language without comprehending the culture is like going to the vibrant Mexican marketplace pictured above and only eating hamburgers from McDonald’s.
Will your food be okay? Sure.
But you’re kind of missing the point. You’re not getting the full experience.
The same goes with language and culture. To fully appreciate a language, you need to understand the culture of the people who speak it—they’re intrinsically connected.
Learning about different cultures helps us approach languages with new insight. It allows us to delve deeper into the meaning of words and expressions and helps us feel more connected to each other.
Okay, I might be romanticizing just a bit.
Still, you can’t deny that language is a huge part of culture, so much that it actually affects culture in the same way that a culture affects the language.
That’s what we’re going to be exploring here, so read on and, hopefully, when you’re done you’ll have a new appreciation for the language (or languages) you’re currently studying as well as the culture it stems from, or maybe even your own culture. Like I said, it’s all connected.