Language and Culture

[Penguin]

So here is the question folks, What is the relationship between language and culture? This question was posed to me a little while ago and I was wondering what you guys could think of. Feel free to use examples and hypotheticals.

[Siniri]

There's a proverb in Irish that sums up my feelings on the subject nicely: "Tír gan teanga, tír gan anam" (roughly translated as "A land without a language is a land without a soul"). I started teaching myself Irish after listening to the Irish language radio station while on holiday in Ireland in 2000. Irish was so musical that I just had to learn it. Some aspects of the language that I think particularly reflect the culture (both historical and more modern aspects):
1) the language is very versatile in how things can be ordered in a sentence, allowing for more wordplay and humor (e.g., in the movie the "Secret of Roan Inish," there's a line, "Look at your arms -- it's like sticks they are"; this moving of something towards the front of a sentence for emphasis is common in Irish and has been carried into Hiberno-English). Ireland has more Nobel laureates in literature per capita than any other country, and the people as a whole are known for their quick wit and sense of humor.
2) Irish has more directional words than English: instead of "east," there's a word each for "from the east," "towards the east," and "(stationary) in the east"; this reflects the historically agrarian nature of the society.
3) instead of being an emotion, they're "on you" -- so you'd roughly say "happiness/sadness/tiredness/hunger/etc. is upon me" -- I'm not quite sure what this reflects culturally.
4) there is no verb for "to have" -- things are "at you" or "with you"; I've read this harkens back to ancient Celtic society where things were communally owned.
5) though they've fallen out of use in many areas, there are a lot of traditional sayings that reflect the religious nature of the society -- the most common greeting is "God to you," for example, with "God and Mary to you" as reply.
6) I've heard there are no cuss words in Irish (so "póg mo thóin" is really more akin to "kiss my rear"). There've been mini-scandals in the U.S. for Irish celebrities cussing on TV, but they really weren't trying to be scandalous; it's just not as big a deal in Ireland to use certain words.
7) colors cover different ranges in different languages; in Irish, both "gorm" and "glas" can be used for varying shades of blue, green, and gray (though gorm is more blue and glas is more green), but there's also a word for artificial green. In addition, there are separate words for certain hair/fur colors. Notably, the word for the color orange is relatively new -- orange shades used to just be called with the same word as yellow. These color differentiations reflect both what was available to see and what was important to differentiate between historically. (By the way, despite the rumored "forty shades of green" -- which really seem to exist in Ireland -- there are not 40 words for green or for snow).
8} the Irish are known for their storytelling, so they often take their time to say things well -- I've inherited the loquaciousness but not the elegance, hence the length here.

These links I've made between Irish language and culture could be disputed, and of course no country has one homogeneous culture, but these generalizations were to show that I believe language and culture are intrinsically linked, and that learning a language can help you learn about a culture.

[Mongrel]

Interesting.
I've actually just started an ASL (American Sign Language) class, and I'm fascinated by the differences my teacher has mentioned encountering within the deaf community. For instance, she said that people who communicate primarily through signing often will be very blunt: "You got fat! What happened?" was the example she used, and went on to explain that this sort of comment would not be intended as an insult, but a concerned question, wondering if you were sick or under stress. I kind of wonder if that's got to do with the necessary economy of words: if you've ever seen someone sign as an interpreter or hold a conversation in sign language, you've seen how fast they go, and even though years of practice probably help you develop the speed and endurance to keep your hands and arms and face moving so much it's still a lot easier to skip the tact and get to the point.
Many of the signs(though not most) are connected to physical features or concepts. The sign for "red" is tapping the lips once, which I think is because we think of lips as red(even though they're naturally more pinkish). It's pretty darn cool.

[Siniri]

Slightly off-topic, but in response to Moongewl's post. I took an ASL class, and at the end we watched a tape of a theatre troupe that does skits/monologues/etc. in ASL. Many of the signs are based on the first letter of the word (e.g., Christmas is a "c" moved in the shape of a half-wreath). One of the performers did poetry in ASL, and it was very beautiful, taking advantage of the changing shapes as well as this alliteration between signs. It's not something that could ever be captured on the page; it was like a dance but with the fluidity and complexity of language -- just amazing. {Wait, poetry and theater are aspects of culture, so this wasn't off-topic, after all.}

I just did a quick youtube search to see if I could find an example, but I guess it's like poetry in any language -- there are a lot of people who self-publish poems without understanding what makes a good (or a bad) poem.

[Nani]

Tying into Siniri's post, if a culture *doesn't* have a word for a concept, then they probably don't have that concept. I suppose it seems like it would be the other way around, like they don't have the word because they don't have the concept, but I think it can go both ways. For example, I speak Spanish as a second language (learned in school) and there are often things that I would like to express in English (my first language) but simply can't because we don't have the words. I never even thought to name those things before learning the words for them in Spanish. That would suggest that we really rely on language to shape our experience, and not just experience to shape our language. Of course, this falls apart a bit because Spanish-speakers don't have one unified culture, but I bet if you looked at other languages and populations you'd find a similar effect.

[Zilary]

Hmm, I see it as every culture produces a language but not every language produces a culture.

For me, I am Asian-American. My Asian background (due to my parents) allows me to learn Chinese and take traditions/values within that culture to be celebrated (such as Chinese New Year, Lunar festivals, etc.). Likewise, my American background (due to my location) allows me to learn English and be assimilated into my current society. However, I don't consider my "culture" to be truly Asian or American, but rather both as one culture (thus I share both languages). My ability to be bilingual resulted from my cultural background rather than my culture resulted from language (if that makes sense).

Another example of culture (aside from ethnicities) would be things like internet culture or modern culture or generational culture. Internet culture produces the languages such as L337 or chatspeak or lolcat. Modern culture and/or generation culture can produces different variations of the same language. Example would be the word "gay" (not to offend anyone, that was the first word I thought up)...10 years ago it meant happy or joyous but now it is synonymous with a gender preference. Words such as "groovy" and "neat-o" were replaced with "awesome", "tight", or "off the chain".

Language and culture are inseparable, but one is the result of another. Like the example above, you can learn or get introduced to a culture by learning its language.