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Language and Culture | ||
Tags: Cultural Identity | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| zarinazahri Newbie Malaysia Joined 6589 days ago 6 posts - 6 votes Speaks: EnglishB2 | Message 9 of 14 23 November 2006 at 12:35am | IP Logged | ||
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Yep, i agree that race differences is a bit out dated.With so many intercultural marriages, it is difficult to categorised.
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| rkunz Diglot Senior Member United States learnthatlanguagenow Joined 6836 days ago 103 posts - 101 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Japanese | Message 10 of 14 23 November 2006 at 9:32pm | IP Logged | ||
I don't see what intercultural marriage has to do with race differences... if a white American and a white Swedish person married, their child is still of one race, right? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| dmg Diglot Senior Member Canada dgryski.blogspot.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 7022 days ago 555 posts - 605 votes 1 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Dutch, Esperanto | Message 11 of 14 23 November 2006 at 10:29pm | IP Logged | ||
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Suppose you could physically line up the entire population of the world according to 'race', from some extremely dark-skinned Africans on the left over to some Swedish albinos on the right. Wherever you draw your race distinction lines, there is going to be more variance between memebers of the same 'race' than people on either side of the border.
But this whole discussion seems way off topic. Here's a language-related topic to get the discussion back to something relevent to the forums: Is it, or is it not, possible to learn a language without learning anything of the culture of the people who speak that language. I say it is not possible. Learning the culture is a part of learning the language. Language is created by people in the culture, and so is itself part of the culture, intermingled in a way that is impossible to separate. Idioms, slang, turns-of-phrase, jokes, are all an essential part of language learning, and understanding any of those requires understanding the cultural context in which they were created. Any other thoughts? Edited by dmg on 23 November 2006 at 10:48pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| zarinazahri Newbie Malaysia Joined 6589 days ago 6 posts - 6 votes Speaks: EnglishB2 | Message 12 of 14 24 November 2006 at 1:02am | IP Logged | ||
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Agree,it is not possible to learn one withoutknowing the other coz our thoughts, ideas, belief and perception is all mirrored in the structure and content of our language.
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| rkunz Diglot Senior Member United States learnthatlanguagenow Joined 6836 days ago 103 posts - 101 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Japanese | Message 13 of 14 26 November 2006 at 4:30am | IP Logged | ||
I also find it somewhat offensive to say that race differences are "out dated" when people are killed everyday simply for being the "wrong" color. It is an important topic today still. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| virgule Senior Member Antarctica Joined 6851 days ago 242 posts - 261 votes Studies: Korean | Message 14 of 14 26 November 2006 at 6:57am | IP Logged | ||
Causally, your question doesn't work out. Language is part of culture, and therefore you can't study the effects of language on culture as such. Probably you have a more specific question, though. No, a culture doesn't produce a race. A culture might be linked to a particular ethnicity. This is often the case. An ethnicity is different from a race; and you should uphold this difference. An ethnicity describes a group of people who share a culture, are related through kinship, and identify with said culture. The key aspect is that members of an ethnicity consider themselves as members of the group. Race, on the other hand, is externally defined. To make this difference clear, you might not be aware of what race the central government considers you when devising a certain policy. You will always know your ethnicity, though. Assuming you are of mixed descent, then the difference becomes apparent. According to the census you might be considered one thing (race), however, you might identify with being another (ethnicity). In a biological sense, there are no human races (variation within "races" is too large to define coherent boundaries); we're all the same. In common use, there are races, because we consider them to exist (kill each other). Coming back to your question: a shared culture doesn't necessarily mean a shared language(consider multi-lingual countries with a single culture); and likewise, a shared language doesn't mean a shared culture (consider the languages spoken in many different countries). Thinking about different cultures brings you into areas as messy as the definition of what a language is. There is a strong political element involved. Just consider countries that divide and suddenly there are new languages where there was previously one (maybe with dialects). The same is the case with cultures. You may focus on a shared culture for reasons of strengthening a unified nation-state; you might focus on cultural differences for reasons of separatism. There are similarities in all European cultures, but generally we consider French and German culture as different, for example. However, when comparing said cultures to say China or Mongolia, we might consider them as reasonably similar. Where does this leave you? There are no fast rules, and you will have to use a reasoned approach that us fit for your particular question. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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