When learning a new language, understanding the culture of its native speakers is just as important—if not more so—than memorizing vocabulary.

Learning a new language isn’t just about mastering words; it’s about understanding another group of people. In essence, you’re embracing their culture alongside their language.

This cultural understanding can also guide your decision when choosing a new language to learn. Consider the people and places where the language is spoken. If you feel drawn to a specific culture, you’re likely to enjoy learning its language more—it’s the connection to people that makes language learning exciting.

What Is Culture And How Does It Connect To Language Learning?

When learning a language, you will sooner or later come upon the idea of learning the culture of speakers of that language. This is a really important aspect of language learning that should not be undervalued. But what is culture exactly?

Culture is what binds a group of people together. It reflects their shared ways of speaking, gestures, and approaches to daily life.

Culture is hard to define because the thing it is defining shifts so regularly.

What this means is that the culture of a city, a country, or a group of people, is different today than what it was 20 years ago. If you don’t believe me, spend some time with teenagers today and see how their clothing, speaking and values compare to your time as a teenager. 

Imagine a group of people with shared experiences spending time together. Over time, their language and gestures naturally evolve. If you fast forward a year, new words and gestures may have arisen. Culture is the word that describes the fact that this group of people all belong to the same group. More than that, the word culture relates to all of the things that make this group what it is.

It’s more than just the people themselves: if you imagine the culture within a workplace, people will be coming and going over the year. That workplace remains, but the culture within it shifts. The values within the workplace may also change over time, ebing and flowing between different things, depending on the person, or people, who are setting and guiding culture.

This also means that culture can have a direct impact on words. The value that we place on words changes over time. A good example of this is looking at swear words. The words that were considered most hurtful 20 years ago is not the same set of swear words that people use today. Even more so, words that people in one country use almost colloquially, are considered the most offensive of swear words in another country. 

This means that the dictionary definition doesn’t quite convey the full meaning of the word. It might convey the technical meaning, but it doesn’t do justice to the actual value of the word. Does the word have positive or negative connotations? The dictionary can’t help with that. 

Only knowing the culture and the value that society places on the words can help us understand the full meaning of the words.

From this perspective, if you were to learn a language without learning the culture, you are only learning the shell without the actual personality of what’s inside it. The good news is that even if you were learning a language at home, you would still catch elements of culture intertwined in your learning.

How Does Culture Change Words?

So, why does understanding culture matter when learning a language? Why can’t we simply focus on vocabulary?

One major reason is that learning the dictionary definition of words doesn’t quite provide the full context or meaning. Consider the German word Gemütlichkeit. English dictionaries might define it as “coziness, cordiality, agreeableness, friendliness, or congeniality.” If we were to take this at face value, we’d potentially be using the word a lot more than Germans would, as, based on the definition, this encompasses a wide range of scenarios. However, gemütlichkeit in German means much more than this.

The use of the word in German goes far beyond the meaning that the dictionary gives. It’s not just friendliness, it’s the feeling of community and togetherness with those around you. But it’s also more than this! It’s not simply the idea of being cozy (think, comfortable, wrapped up in a blanket with hot chocolate), it’s the idea of feeling cozy with people around you. 

In essence, I think the best way to describe gemütlichkeit is to say that it is the moment when you realize that life is good, you are content, and making memories with a group of people around you. This could be at a festival like Oktoberfest, or on a picnic with friends, or any other place where everything comes together and you find yourself at peace and happiness.

Now, take all of that and try to put it into a definition in a dictionary for anyone to read and know exactly when and how to use it. The definition simply does not do it justice.

This is why learning culture alongside language is important.

Textbooks are quite helpful with language learning, as well as combining cultural aspects into what you are learning. Some textbooks will also compare and contrast cultural elements in different topics as you learn new words and grammar, which is great! Even learning language through conversational AI would provide you with the opportunity to ask it questions about different cultural elements, though this may be a little out of date and lack nuance or personal experiences as compared to using a language tutor.

How Do You Learn The Culture Of Another Language?

The next question to ask yourself is simply this: how can I best learn the culture of another language?

The best way to learn about a culture is by using the language in context. Interacting with native speakers reveals the true nuances of their words. When they’re discussing home, is there a word for house and home? When they describe something, is there a positive or negative connotation attached to the word they use? 

Some of this can be learned at least in part, by finding the definitions of words. The rest of it though, can only really be learned by using the language.

While this will give you much of the cultural experience, this still won’t be good enough to fully learn the culture of another language.

That’s because culture encapsulates more than just language. Language is just one expression of culture.

The absolute best way to learn culture, while learning the language, is to take a holiday or study trip over to the country of the language you are learning. Spending time in Germany while studying German at university did wonders for my language level. Even more so, it helped the language come alive and connected it with the way of life of Germans.

If going to the country is out of your reach at the moment, that’s ok! There are other ways to learn the culture of a language. Consider how far American culture has spread across the world through movies and TV shows. Try to find some German-made shows and movies to help incorporate some German culture into your learning. At the same time, you’ll get to hear some great German language.

Unsurprisingly, much of the German media, particularly the media that is popular outside of Germany, relates to war. While many of the following TV shows and movies that I’ll list relate to World War 1 and World War 2, I do not condone the fighting. I found that several of these did an amazing job of showing the futility and fruitlessness of fighting wars, rather than celebrating them. It doesn’t matter whose perspective these stories are told from, nobody comes out on top. Those who survive still have scars and memories to deal with.

A few suggestions if you’re not sure where to start:

TV Shows
Name	Year	Length	Description
Generation War: Our Mothers, Our Fathers	2013	3 episodes	Following 5 friends across WWII
Dark	2017	3 seasons	Mystery-drama. Two children go missing in a small German town
Babylon Berlin	2017	4 seasons	Follow a detective in 1929 Berlin investigating Berlin’s nightlife
Deutschland 83 Deutschland 86 Deutschland 89	201520182020	3 seasons total	An East German is recruited to infiltrate the West German army during the Cold War

Movies
Name	Year	Description
All Quiet On The Western Front	2022	Young German boys go to fight in World War I, believing it will be the adventure of a lifetime
The Lives Of Others Das Leben der anderen	2006	A secret police agent in East Germany conducts surveillance on people, including his lover
The Baadermeinhof Complex	2008	Exploring a German terrorist group during the 1960s and 70s
The Wave Die Welle	2008	A teacher experiments with social constructs and dictatorships
Downfall	2004	Hitler’s last days in WWII
Look Who’s Back Er ist wieder da!	2015	Hitler is back! Except nobody believes it is really him. Also, it’s now 2014
Good Bye Lenin!	2003	A family attempts to keep East Germany alive for their frail mother

Keep in mind, that you don’t need to necessarily view these purely in German for you to get some understanding of the German culture from these shows or movies.

If you are looking to learn the language from some sort of media, any show or movie that has German audio will work – though mileage may vary with the quality of dubbing. The point of these listed shows and movies is to help give you an idea of the German culture and way of life. 

If you want to know more about how to learn German by watching shows, future posts will discuss how and why this might be a good method of learning for you.

Besides watching shows and movies, there’s plenty of information about reading books as well, which may not provide much information about culture but will also give you an extra opportunity to learn the language through active use. Information about reading books to learn the language can be found here.

A final way to learn the culture of a language is by listening to music. There is a lot more information about that which won’t be able to be covered in just this one post. Listening to music is also a viable method of language learning, and is discussed further in this post.