What Role Does Culture Play In Language Learning?

A Brazilian Japanese learner recently asked me a fascinating question that gets to the heart of language learning: “Can I learn Japanese without caring about the culture?”

It's a question that deserves a nuanced answer, and one that many language learners grapple with.

It touches on something fundamental about language learning that we don't often discuss openly: What role does culture play in language learning?

And the answer? Well, it's more complex than you might think.

If you prefer watching videos to reading, hit play on the video version of this post at the top of this page. Otherwise, here's what you'll discover in this post:

Culture And Language: An Inseparable Relationship?

Now, can you separate culture from the language? Well, obviously culture is an integral part of the language in many ways.

It's impossible to separate the language from the culture. And it's probably not very desirable to do so either.

Culture and language exist within each other – the culture influences the language and the language influences the culture. And both of these things change over time.

In many ways, it's rather silly to suggest that you can learn the language without the culture.

But here's where it gets interesting.

The Beginner's Dilemma: Communication, Then Culture

Maybe you're not interested in the culture. Maybe you simply want to learn the language for other purposes.

I was talking about this the other day in a Facebook group with some really experienced language learners and we had a bit of a debate about this – about whether or not it's valid to learn phrases in a language without necessarily knowing the cultural significance.

When you're first starting to learn a language, your main priority isn't to integrate into the culture.

It's not necessarily even to understand the cultural elements of the language that you're learning. Rather, it is to begin to communicate in whatever way possible.

When I learn a new language, I like to get to a kind of minimum level of communicative competence as soon as possible. In plain English, that means I like to be able to speak as soon as possible.

Because I'm a beginner, I have no pretence of being culturally savvy or knowing the correct things to do in any situation – which is not to say I don't want to, but I'm not pretending that I know that I'm culturally literate yet.

I'm just trying to get to a point where I can speak and hold a conversation, because once I can do that, that's the point for me where I can just double down and really start to learn the language with some depth.

The B1 Threshold: When Culture Becomes Essential

I've said this a number of times before – B1 level in a language is often the cut-off point for many things. And among those things is when culture really starts to become important.

You can learn to speak a language conceptually by just learning the basic words and phrases and become minimally conversational up to a B1 level without any cultural awareness whatsoever.

However, beyond that, if you want to move up to a B2 or C1 level, you need to be able to hold a decent, interesting, effective conversation. And in order to really have a good conversation in the language, this is the point where you can't separate culture.

What Role Does Culture Play In Language Learning?: Japanese

Let me give you an example. Japanese is a great case in point because obviously it's got a very distinctive culture which is different from yours and mine in many ways.

You can sit down with a Japanese person and have a conversation about language learning and you could cover all the points and discuss what you want to discuss.

In that case, culture might not have anything to do with the Japanese that you use in that conversation.

But let's imagine after that, you went and sat down in a restaurant and started to order food and have a meal. At this point, when you're actually interacting socially, this is where it becomes impossible to separate culture.

There are all kinds of little etiquette considerations that you have to observe when you sit down and have a meal in Japan with Japanese people. It's very much a kind of formulaic thing.

The typical thing to do is:

• You sit down and if your host has chosen the venue, you'll compliment the venue and say how nice it is
• You'll let everybody else sit down first
• You won't order your food first – you'll let everybody else order
• When the food comes, you'll compliment the food and say how good it is

You say all these things that we probably wouldn't in English or Portuguese because it's not a cultural thing to do. But in Japan this is very much a routine thing to do.

At this point, if you stray from this kind of formula, then you're doing something which is culturally inappropriate.

It doesn't really matter how accurate your Japanese is – if you're not doing it with the etiquette in mind, then you're not doing a good job.

You can extend this to many different aspects of Japanese as well:

• meeting people for the first time
• the way that you exchange cards and bow
• the way you answer the phone.

All of these different aspects of daily life in Japanese are infused with the culture. And if you aren't aware of that culture, you're going to put your foot in it time and time again.

The same thing goes for any language. Every single language I've learned, in every country I've been to, they have their own norms and their own customs and their own different varieties of etiquette. And it's important for you to know all those things.

But probably not quite at the beginning.

My Practical Advice: A Balanced Approach

So in summary, I'd say that you should always aim to understand the culture as best you can. As a point of principle, that's a good thing to do.

But when you're first getting started, I wouldn't worry about it too much. You don't need to dive into a very thorough examination of Japanese culture – although I think it would help you if you did – but there's no need. You can just concentrate on the language.

Just be aware that when you want to really up your game, when you really want to start to speak the language more naturally and develop deeper relationships with the people that you're talking to, that's when culture starts to become really, really important.

What Role Does Culture Play In Language Learning? FAQ

Olly Richards

Creator of the StoryLearning® Method

Olly Richards is a renowned polyglot and language learning expert with over 15 years of experience teaching millions through his innovative StoryLearning® method. He is the creator of StoryLearning, one of the world's largest language learning blogs with 500,000+ monthly readers.

Olly has authored 30+ language learning books and courses, including the bestselling "Short Stories" series published by Teach Yourself.

When not developing new teaching methods, Richards practices what he preaches—he speaks 8 languages fluently and continues learning new ones through his own methodology.