Nowadays many people are interested in other cultures. But how to learn about them? The aim of my essay is to speak about learning the language to understand the culture.
Let us start considering the understanding another culture by only learning the language. First, if you choose to understand culture by learning a foreign language it’s a good way because in this way you‘ll learn about culture widely. Learning the language can help you to understand the literature. Poetry, music and films of other culture. Also, if you are a traveler and you want to get to know the locals, language is necessary. Remember, it‘s always good to have a friend from another country. Furthermore, language can help you to read signs, menus.
There is an easier way to understand the culture. You don‘t need to learn a foreign language. First, you can enroll on a special course at your community college. It can be a dance, or a cooking class. In this way you‘ll know their traditional dances or local cuisine. Second, you can visit local museums and cultural centers, especially when there are exhibitions from other countries. Moreover, you can visit your city library and take books about travels. If you read those books you can find out interesting things about cultures of other countries.
For example, recently our gymnasium had a trip to Sweden. Of course, we didn‘t know their language but Swedish are pretty good at English.
We travelled by ferry. During this trip we had Geography lesson in English. It was very interesting. I learned new facts about Sweden. Later, teachers gave a task to interview Swedish people. From the first sight I was scared to talk with foreigners but later I got used to it. People are very friendly and polite there. They agreed to answer all our questions.
In conclusions, it is clear that there are many different ways to understand other cultures and language is very important. For students like me it‘s important to know how to speak in other languages. In this way it‘s possible to gain a lot of experience. After our trip to Sweden it become clear that young people should know as many languages as it is possible. So all in all, languages broaden our horizons.
I would like to enclose a short extract from our interview in Sweden.
We can ask if openness to foreigners and other ways of solving typical social and individual problems is an European or Christian-Judean trade or that this merely is a good approach for anybody travelling.
How might we learn and teach about the mutitude we are more inclined to interact with, although I think the Spanish might interact more often with the French and France than the Lithuanians with Sweden for instance.