Language and Culture

Abstract

The human being is able to create, express ideas and feelings too many ways, the lenguage is one of these and it may be the most important. When you learn a new language you also open up your mind to a new culture as the Viennese thinker Ludwig Wittgenstein said “Die Grenzen meiner Spreche bedeuten die Grenzen meiner Welt” (The limits of my language mean the limits of my world).

Key words: Language, Culture, Education

Resumen

El ser humano es capaz de crear, expresar ideas y sentimientos a través de muchas maneras, el lenguaje es uno de ellos, tal vez el más importante. Cuando aprendes un nuevo idioma también abres tu mente a una nueva cultura, como el pensador Vienes Ludwig Wittgenstein dijo “Die Grenzen meiner Spreche bedeuten die Grenzen meiner Welt” (los límites de mi lenguaje son los límites de mi mundo)

Palabras clave: Lenguaje, Cultura, Educación

First Ideas

Language shows the evolution of each particular country, it’s important to point out that there are not language parameters to bring a cultural level thru the idiom, because each culture is the result of different process of socialization. Each language inherits a singular history and a set of circumstances that configure its own existence.

Imagine for a moment a girl in Sabalito of Coto Brus, we don’t know if she could travel to Europe one day, but if she has the possibility to learn a language will take a trip around the world, out of place, out of time; she might fight against wind mills of Don Quijote, also could intent to put a stop to Juliet in her death wish as in Shakespiere's Romeo & Juliet, moreover would walk around Paris crying the poems of Victor Hugo. The translations are not enough; the masterpiece of this is deep inside its story, inside its language in its natural estate.


Today teachers must comprehend the cultural value of different languages, stop repeating irregular verbs and solitary words, the students need to felt and to learn the culture and the relationship between words and phrases.

Learn a new language as maternal language

Before its birth the human being is directly impacted by its culture, the words, songs, are a common daily occurrence, when the new born start meeting people they start receiving stimuli and the language begins to flow naturally this process shows us result of a repetition of words, it’s the result of the immersing the person and the culture and its natural processes the educational system must replace its procedures and make an effort to activate this elements. This system shows us that a language is not the result of inflexible repeating, is just the consequence of the experience between the person and the culture where is immersed. The language arises naturally, without rigid schemes.

The educational system must replant its procedures, and effort to incorporate into an active way the elements of the culture in the process of learning a new language. The educational system has the obligation citizens being able to establish a dialogue with others humanitarian competent people a new repertory to help make a combination. The society needs persons more humanitarian competent to establish bridges, open windows, to generate a real intercultural relation between nations.

Walking to a new language: Seven Tips

I offer some advice that could be used in the process of assimilate new repertory of words, this tips are a way to make a combination between culture and language.

1. Ask to students what do they know about the culture, that are going to learn.
2. Show to the student’s manifestations of the culture, art, food, sports, and religions.
3. Ask them about what do they like and dislike of these cultural elements.
4. Leave them investigate about one of these topic for expose in the future.
5. Show them another types of cultural manifestations thru videos, music, plastic arts, etc.
6. Incorporate listening and writing skills, using as tool the repertory of words learned in the previously steps.
7. Give them some text fragments of traditional literature and let them perform in drama or musical terms, etc.

Conclusion

The culture is the result of social process, the language manifest it, more than a simple picture of the word, the language represent also the words than cannot be pronounce. Professors must review their methods, and recall to mind the necessity of a real dialogue between cultures, the language is the path, and you are the guides.

Actual society is infected by individualism, the humans believe that is more important the material than the human, and practice a silent war to conquest to the Other, exists an allergy against the other. The educational system must answer to present challenges, revitalizing the idea of person, developing methods founded on an ethic position, where the dialog is the axis. The language is the tactic to reply to the crisis and the possibility to generate a Mundial Ethos.

I share with you a phase of Martin Buber, “the man cannot be entirely made man by means of his relation with itself but thanks to its relation with another one” (1973:93); the education has the possibility to guide the humanity for a better society, where the culture will manifest the creativity and the solidarity of human being. Teacher you have the possibility to obtain great changes with small actions.

Bibliography
Buber, M. (1973) ¿Qué es el hombre?. México: Fondo de Culturas Económica.
Wittgenstein L. (1981) Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. Editorial Alianza, Spain.