Language and Culture | First Learn the Language, Then the Culture.

[@Thelinguist]

What do you like and dislike the most in beginner language text books? 10 Secrets of Language Learning ⇢ www.thelinguist.com LingQ Grammar Guides ⇢ www.lingq.com/en/grammar-resource/ My blog ⇢ blog.thelinguist.com/ The LingQ blog ⇢ www.lingq.com/blog/ My Podcast ⇢ soundcloud.com/lingostevepodcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/learn-languages-with-steve-kaufmann/id1437851870 --- Social Media Instagram ⇢ instagram.com/lingosteve_/ TikTok ⇢ www.tiktok.com/@lingosteve Facebook ⇢ facebook.com/lingosteve Twitter ⇢ twitter.com/lingosteve LingQ Discord ⇢ discord.gg/ShPTjyhwTN

[@calajane9881]

Judging by the photos added as Steve talks, I have to assume the editor is such a troll! I love them so much!!!

[@muttlanguages3912]

5:00 is the best I found 8:10 is pretty good too

[@alexwhite3830]

Yeah, I had to go back when he mentioned family. I thought: "no way he used fast and furious' meme" haha

[@PikRabbit]

Be careful with twitter though, a lot of the times I've seen people put (negative) words into other people's mouths when the topic has nothing to do with it I love your videos, thank you for everything

[@canchero724]

Twitter is like a zoo. You look at the animals from afar and with snacks in hand. You should never ever get into the enclosures as it'll ruin your health.

[@michaelrespicio5683]

At first, I thought the video was about learning the language in order to appreciate the culture. To each their own, I personally look into a culture and country first which inspires me to learn the language. I'm currently learning Icelandic and I figured "why learn any language when you know nothing about the culture or country?" The reasons I got into it in the first place was because I have a native friend, to visit (and maybe live in) the country, to understand shows and movies, to help keep the language alive, and of course meet other natives.

[@santoor_naad]

I think Steve was speaking more along the lines of linguistic culture (what and what not to say, levels of politeness, kinship terms, slang and others) rather than on culture as a whole. But, I totally hear you as far as using the language's culture to propel your learning forward! It is an important step that is easy to get lost in textbooks and grammar terms if we are not careful enough.

[@Tehui1974]

Most language learners will absorb the finer points of the language in the intermediate stage. In the beginner's stage, it should just be about getting started in the language.

[@ErnieV76]

I think the twitter posts were insinuating that Steve doesn’t care about the culture in the languages he learns. Obviously I think that is not true as he learns the languages to get into the culture, history and politics. They were reading too much into one little excerpt of a video he made. Great video Steve. 👍🏼

[@oswaldocaminos8431]

ErnieTheDailyLearner: you are absolutely right. Greetings from the underground.

[@hrmIwonder]

Twitter is a cesspool full of horrible people lol.

[@YogaBlissDance]

@@hrmIwonder True it was giving me so much stress I stopped (mostly.)

[@bobjoe7579]

@@YogaBlissDance and that's when you couldn't stop hugging me ??

[@jimdonovan3092]

I agree that, when starting a language, focus on the biggest things and don’t worry about the details yet. Culture comes almost inevitably as you progress and is part of the rewards of a new language

[@teamjipper2495]

I just returned from Italy with less than a year of Italian under my belt. I fumbled and stumbled my way through conversations - all basic stuff. It was great, especially as the number of English speakers was low where I was. My efforts were definitely appreciated (and sometimes necessary), but at my level no one asked my thoughts on Dante!

[@dlsolof]

Hi Steve, I have an MA in Sociolinguistics. I think it would be wise to define exactly what you mean by “culture”. I understand your point that from a learning perspective it would be easier for the beginner learner to first focus on the language and later integrate culture. But culture is so embedded in language that you can’t avoid it. Even if you think you’re saving it for later, you’re not because it’s always present. Surface level cultural tidbits like festivals, sure, the student can decide if they want it now or another time. But what a group of people values shows up in language. Even if people don’t show offense when you miss something or get it wrong, they often do show they are touched when you get it right, or at least try. Something to think about.

[@ishathakor]

i second this. there simply isn't the kind of separation of language and culture you need to leave culture until you understand the language better. it definitely can apply to stuff like festivals or fables commonly told to children but it's not true for a lot of the stuff that is a part of the language. steve brought up korean and japanese and as a korean learner i really don't think it's possible to understand a lot of media as it was intended until you can at least identify the different speech levels and have a rough idea of the differences between them. also i don't think people should just put important stuff to know about the cultural aspects of using the language on the back burner just because natives don't get offended if/when you say something wrong. i'm a native speaker of hindi and when a leaner uses the wrong politeness with me it's not offensive but i do have to remind myself that they didn't mean any offense and are just learning.

[@dlsolof]

@@ishathakor These are great points. Regarding Korean, I lived and worked in Seoul for a year. From my observation, in general, the people were so appreciative of any effort you made to show understanding and consideration of their culture. They often acknowledged that it must’ve been a huge challenge for me to adapt to them. They often didn’t directly address mistakes I made, but that didn’t mean they were comfortable with my mistakes. So I had to learn the subtext, and yes, this takes time, but having a teacher or book point it out does make the learning and adapting process more efficient.

[@inesalmeida2199]

This view can only really apply to languages that are only spoken in one country, and even then, by small groups of people. Obviously, language and culture are intertwined but grammar and basic vocabulary can be learned despite this. For instance, English, Spanish, Portuguese, Standard Arabic are all the same language independently of the country/group and the culture still shows through them. I don't really saying that people can focus on sounds and grammar first, when everything is completely new, is the same as saying that culture and language are disconnected.

[@nicedog1]

There are a lot of idiots on Twitter that get offended by anything and everything. It’s best avoided altogether.

[@joseluismaranonbenavides170]

there is a mix of culture and language , this mix is necessary to envolve the learning of foreign language

[@HusseinNAhmad]

Teacher Steve inspire me to learn more and more languages ; I speak English and french and persian and now i am learning Russian language ; Maybe i become a Polyglot a day and make a Channel on KZbin ; Thanks Steve ❤ .

[@reuptrax9756]

I like this take on the subject.

[@ariohandoyo5973]

I'm learning english not only because of the languange only, i'm interested in western culture cos in western culture people always talk dreams, and made me have a dream, my dream is to travel as english native speakers did.😊

[@MATTierial]

Please do the cultural mini-stories in Lingq! It would be a fantastic bridge for beginner to intermediate!

[@stephen9306]

I think this is a perfectly pragmatic approach. You have limited resources to learn a language - usually the limiting factor is the time you have available. Every moment spent learning one thing is time that can't be spent learning another. That means it's necessary to triage what you learn following some sort of prioritisation. Often the decision is made for you by textbooks or teachers, but a decision still has to be made somewhere. And if you're crafting your own learning journey then you have to make these decisions yourself. Steve is quite right to suggest (and it is only a suggestion!) prioritising overall language proficiency across the breadth of the language over esoteric cultural details. Frankly, I think that if you focus on the language then you'll naturally get the important parts of the culture "by osmosis", as it were, since they'll come up again and again in different contexts. And speaking for myself, learning a language has only made me *more* curious to know about the culture. The more I know of the language, the more likely I am to use my non-language-learning time to engage with the culture just because I'm interested!

[@teamjipper2495]

I agree 100% with Steve. There is too much to be learned early on. Choices on what needs to learned must be made.

[@Algazhan]

It is always the pleasure watch your videos and listen to your advice

[@ocaminhodoingles]

Master, you always bring a lot of important information, and I feel you go deep on the explanation and that is really nice of you, thank you for all the support you give for learners all over the world, you are an inspiration for all learner language lovers everywhere. And by the way, I agree with you, people are getting offended so easy in these days, not everyone as you said, but some noisy people I think.

[@dennisenglishjournal498]

Hi Steve, thanks for your podcasts, they are always useful and wise! 😊🙋‍♂️ I'm aware that the cultural aspect IS important in language learning 🤔 When I explain my own students nuances of the language, I try to include some cultural references 🙂 For instance, I make fun and silly videolessons using lines from Eminem's songs 😁 Happy New Year to you, Steve, and the whole community ! 🎄 Let's learn English together in upcoming 2022! 🙌

[@petrupace4165]

Great job,Steve.You are absolutely amazing!Wishing you a happy new year,full of joy,happiness and good health.

[@CaptainWumbo]

It comes down to input vs output. We need these details to perform at a native level when outputting, but it does not matter at all if we know if something is more specific or more general when getting input, we just want to know in this particular sentence it means this thing. Many details with no correlary to our own language are just going to be late acquired. It's a terrible mistake to get worried about which word can only be used in which context before your overall comprehension is strong.

[@thenaturalyogi5934]

I agree with Steve with regards to putting cultural aspects later on down the road when you have spent enough time with the language. I remembered this with Mandarin as a child learning the basics in pre-school and the only relationship we were taught was for mom 妈妈, dad 爸爸, older 姐姐 and younger 妹妹 sister, then older 哥哥and younger brother 弟弟 but only because families usually have these and it's the basic form of the traditional family. We didn't learn the word for cousin older, younger, male or female until in elementary I think and we were never taught other relationships like maternal vs paternal grandparents. In Hokkien (and I'm sure in Mandarin as well) each member of the family has a specific name depending on your position in the family versus the person you are trying to address, so if your father is the eldest child then your uncles who would be younger than him would be called by you in a different name vs your cousin who would call your dad another name. It's an entire family tree thing and I don't even know all the specifics at my age (30) so anyway I call all my uncles "uncle" because its just easier that way LOL. I think this is what Steve was talking about when he said culture. So what I can say when I started learning Portuguese on the other hand which I'm not sure but I think has less nuances than Chinese languages is that they have formal and informal words or phrases so I think personally just learning the formal and informal words or phrases is enough at the beginning without getting into the specifics like what I tried to explain in detail over here. That is to say that it's not the priority at first, what's the purpose of the language if you know how to call the first cousin twice removed or something in the language when you can't even order a bottle of water or understand when people are simply asking for your name and where you're from?

[@Pamela._]

I must confess that the sentence "First Learn the Language, Then the Culture" made me say: WHAAAT? Because in all languagues that I learned/ learning or intend to learn in the future the main atractive was excatly cultural. Knowing some history, politics, religion, music, books, etc is always the reason why I want to know a language, in order to understand better the culture, to be able to read about these subjects in the target language instead of Portuguese. And then of course acquire more accurate information. On the other hand I agree completely when you talk abour levels of politeness. In italian I find it difficult to learn "forma di cortesia" and I just use the informal way when I'm practicing. After all, I don't intend to have a meeting with the prime minister or the Pope and I know that people in general won't be offended and it won't be enough to cause a diplomat incident. I believe that with just the comprehensible input that I have acess to now, soon the formal way of talking is gonna be in my brain so I don't worry about that. I prefer to use my time to learn the future tense or other things that I'll be needing the most. But your examples with Japanese made me understand that your advices should work for learning "difficult languages" (more distant to our own) 'Cause the languages I'm learning so far are the "easy ones": Romance languages and English (that we're all pretty much exposed since childhood). So I guess I never started at "zero" nor with a different written alphabet. I'll have this video in mind when I finally can get past arabic alphabet and start learning proper sentences :)

[@bekihunt3760]

Spot on Steve! I especially agree with your ideas on teaching swears. Funny story, when I lived in Taiwan, as a kindergarten teacher on a field trip with the kids and some of their parents, one of the parents yelled out..."Oh my god, look at all that bird shit children!" Ha! The English teachers eyes widened and just hoped the kids didn't copy her. You're an inspiration Steve, I only speak 3 languages, but you're inspiring me to learn a fourth!

[@1chicgeek368]

Hi Steve. There is a young woman on KZbin who speaks 5 or 6 languages. She did a video (once in English and once in German) titled Language & Identity and spoke on how different aspects of your personality come out depending on which language you are speaking (i.e., animated or more serious, higher or lower pitch, how much you use your hands when you speak, etc.) I would be interested in your opinion on this idea. Happy New Year 🥳

[@sonaannasiby4415]

Link please

[@1chicgeek368]

@@sonaannasiby4415 English kzbin.info/www/bejne/haSlnHR-rtd5sKM German kzbin.info/www/bejne/q2jTaGqwYrJnbpo

[@sonaannasiby4415]

@@1chicgeek368 thank you🙏

[@Pamela._]

Nice. That's a subject that interests me a lot. Once someone said to me that I speak spanish more high- pitched than in my native language (portuguese). I found that funny but later on I realized that it was true!

[@hrmIwonder]

Obviously I can't speak for everyone, but I've found natives very tolerant of being accidentally tutoied. They see you're learning, they understand. Sure, there are jerks out there, but most people are just happy to see you at least try to use their language.

[@casper9029]

Steve, in Ireland where I live, it's very difficult to get to know the culture of Irish people. They don't accept foreigners as friends. You as a foreigner will always be kind of an outsider, therefore native people of a given country will always feel that you don't share the same values. That's why there will always be a distance between a foreigner and the native people.

[@YogaBlissDance]

Casper that is a HUGE statement to APPLY TO folks all over the world and from different cultures? It's one single truth, but there are others who I'm sure have had the opposite experience with Irish folks- maybe even married had kids etc...

[@timothydouglas9474]

I agree with you that there are some such people, in every country. But it sounds like you are making a sweeping generalization about everyone. The more you assimilate into a culture and learn the language, the more you will be accepted by more people.

[@zabaanshenaas]

That is why we must learn Irish.

[@alexacarenati]

TOTALLY agree, most of those worries have to do with people pleasing, low self-confidence and unnecessary perfectionism

[@alixday4346]

I absolutely agree with you. I speak Vietnamese and there are 20+ pronouns for people and family members. None of these would have been useful to me years ago and they would have only hindered my progress because they would have been confusing. It's hard to even apply them when you're still grasping the basics and non communicating fluently yet, let alone before you've spent enough time with/in the culture. Now I use them with ease.

[@ibrahimelsadi1740]

This is an important topic, and I hope for more from you.Thank you Steve

[@learningenglishwithtom]

I think this depends more on the language learners level of experience. For example, just simply learning the formal “you” in different languages is something I’ll do on day 1 now, but it may be better for an absolute learner to learn just one way at first (preferably the form less likely to cause offense.)

[@ibrahimali9564]

Great video as always, Steve! I agree with you.

[@learningenglishwithtom]

And I would be careful taking the attitude of “I’m a beginner so I’ll learn nuances later” and making that known. Imagine an English learner says something that is offensive that was unintended (maybe just too direct for us for example), and when you mention it they say “Well I am not high enough of a level so the nuances are not important.” That now crosses the line from a misunderstanding to flat out disrespectful.

[@coolbluetunes9885]

the language is the culture

[@alefmachado7312]

Steve, Thanks

[@saeeddargahi4750]

Great steve , thanks for your useful tips.

[@retireditguy9493]

I am not on any social media and your story illustrates why, however I can’t fully agree with your position on not being concerned about learning at least the important aspects of culture from the start. I am an intermediate speaker of Vietnamese (waiting for LingQ support) and there are things a novice should be sensitive to when learning Vietnamese. Some specific examples are the use of 3rd person pronouns. While English has few, Vietnamese has many which indicate respect, position in society, and familiarity with the speaker. Native speakers will sometime cast an insult by purposefully using the wrong 3rd person pronoun. Using a 3rd person pronoun that indicates familiarity can cause some women to feel uncomfortable particularly if the conversation is in public. Showing an open palm to a person as is common in the West when saying “hello” can be a problem in rural areas of Vietnam. A foreigner attempting to speak Vietnamese in Vietnam will almost always be given a pass for using the language incorrectly, but why not make the minimal effort to learn at least the important aspects of the culture and do your best to avoid social mistakes?

[@tchernobalde8106]

THANK'S

[@101Cecilia]

Nice, Steve!

[@muttlanguages3912]

I don't mind learning about the cultures as long as I'm not expected to remember what Norwegian's call the festival (for example) of going door to door and begging for candy on Christmas is called. I'm probably never going to get the chance to participate so the specific words don't matter much.

[@sezwo5774]

I guess a lot depends on ones tolerance for making a cultural fool of him/herself. Some people cannot tolerate looking silly so nuance is very important to them from the beginning.

[@jere.nurkka]

0:55 YES I'm curious which languages have different words for uncle or aunt? Finnish has setä (father's brother) and eno (mother's brother) but aunt is just aunt. Which other languages have the same thing?

[@azhivago2296]

Not easy to offend??!!?! Ha! It depends on the person...

[@leonoldfield9765]

👍

[@MDobri-sy1ce]

10:23 The picture of Adele 😂!

[@mluisaforatini7261]

Dear Prof. Kaufmann 我还没观看您这期视频 (这时才看到了), 但按照视频下的几句, 这一次我和您一般来说不同意! 就是说： Чтобы досканально ознакомиться с разными культурами, это желательно, очень важно, и даже необходимо, само собой разумеется, не только изучать свойственные им языки. Но не всегда, и не всем дано добиться до этой цели. Любители, как и я, могут заинтересоваться, но вряд ли станут (по иной или другой причине) знатоками данной или данных культур. Но это им не мешает пользоваться своими ограниченными знаниями, в том числе более знакомыми иностранными языками, если это поможет, чтобы расширять свой узкий взгляд на не так знакомый, да и всё равно (или же: поэтому) привлекательный мир! In your opinion, is this not right? Good Night! 🧝🌜

[@tedcrowley6080]

I haven't tried Twitter yet. Did I miss much?

[@Langermar]

It depends on whether you like arguing with strangers using short messages or not.

[@angelicamarques9750]

Please, subtitles portuguese in others videos. Don't forget brazilians.

[@suilo3265]

听君一席话，胜读十年书。

[@TheESMAT07]

5:30 You can't learn without making fool of yourself, be cool..

[@EFoxVN]

You know, it feels to me like there are people out there who love 'political correctness' and are just eager to condemn others who don't dance to that PC tune. It is almost as if they feel morally superior doing that. Just my two cents. EvN

[@如月-d1x]

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