Do you need language to maintain your culture?

[Nerdsy]

[color=deeppink]By definition, language is an essential part of culture. ([URL="http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/culture"]Source[/URL], Specifically the only definition for the American Heritage New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, though there are plenty more there that help my case).

With that in mind, if the language of a culture is changed than it is not maintained; the said culture has been altered on a fundamental level. This could obviously be taken to extremes, but I'm not going to get into that.

So yes, I'd say one needs language to maintain a culture.[/color]

[eleanor]

[quote name='ChibiHorsewoman'][color=#9933ff][font=lucida calligraphy]I can't believe that no one has brought this up. Korean culture is an excellent example of how you don't need to be allowed to speak the language to have culture.

Korea was taken over by Japan in 1911 (date subject to debate) and the Japanese government prohibited their dress, culture and language to be used. But everything still prospered and people kept their culture in secret and worked hard to maintain their heritage.

So there you have it, culture can survive without language[/color][/font][/QUOTE]

[font="trebuchet ms"] I'm not disagreeing with you, but Koreans still spoke their language in secret. The situation you bring up is different from a gradual obsoleteness of a language.[/font]

[Guest The Blue Jihad]

Proof that you don't need language to maintain your culture:

Watch movies and TV with the sound off.

If you still can understand what's going on, then you don't need language, period.

[spy46]

culture is not what you say or how you say it.

culture is, what if any god/s you follow, what you do or dont do on Xmas, what your house does/may look like for how it was built and what ever other things that let you party on what ever date.

it can also count to what you would wear on the streets, in your house or dont wear in the same places and or on some dates

yes language may be from one culture or another or marked as being from what ever culture, but if i started to speak german, does that mean that i would be addopting the german culture? no only how to speak in it.

its one thing to speak what ever language, but to actually be a part of a culture, you have to live and breath it and agree with what ever the culture would teach, follow the .... traditions, styles and what ever else that is in the culture.

[DeathKnight]

[quote name='Mr. Maul'][FONT=Verdana][SIZE=1]They've been threatening to separate from Canada since WWII? Stop with the empty threats and get on with it already. I believe that if they truly were so serious about it, they would have done so by now.[/SIZE][/FONT][/quote]

[color=crimson]They aren't empty threats, they have gone through multiple referendums regarding the issue of independence and the results have been teetering on the edge of securing their independence. As Canada is Democratic the bureaucratic process must be followed so progress is as you expect it to be.

Quebec's heritage does belong to Britain, the territory Quebec sits on was taken by the British in the French and Indian War (along with all French territory East of the Mississippi). Their cultural heritage is very much so linked to the official language of Quebec which, noticeably, is not English. It is French.

A point I'd like to put forward CHW is that you are American, not Irish or Gaelic. You speak English so yes you are already in line with your dominant culture - American culture, a culture whose cultural information is transmitted through the English language predominantly.

Language is very much an aspect of cultural traditions. Looking at the oldest of writing systems, the Egyptian hieroglyphs, it's hard to imagine Egyptian culture without it. In fact as you watch the New Kingdom fade into Persian, Greek and Roman rule the use of hieroglyphs wanes matching the wane of independent Egyptian culture.

Culture and language do go hand in hand.[/color]

[Minako]

I don't know about the whole Quebec-independence-thing, but Montreal is a beautiful city!

As to the topic on hand, I am a Finnish person (Finnish family and whatnot) who moved from Finland as a mere 2 year old to the States (by way of Germany, but that's not what's being addressed). As a child, I grew up with Finnish in my home, and English everywhere else. Yet, I have no accent when I speak English, but I do when I speak Finnish. When I was younger, I was very Finland-patriotic (which may be against Finnish nature). Finland-this, Finland that, though I never felt like I [I]belonged[/I] in the US. I'd visit Finland, and my Finnish would improve from the Finglish (finnish/english mix) that I'd speak at home, but it would get worse as time went on. I thought I knew everything there was to do with Finland, just because I was a Finn. However, I was very wrong. I didn't know how wrong I was until I went there for a year. I realized that I did not know that much at ALL about my very own culture. I mean, yeah, I knew the stuff that I did at home with my parents, but I felt like I was not as much of a Finn as I thought. I felt very out of place for a while there. As one of my friends put it, "So you don't belong in the US, and you don't belong here [Finland], so you don't belong anywhere, do you? That's so sad!" For a while I almost believed it, that meant I could go anywhere, without feeling grounded anywhere. It was rather refreshing, but now I know that [B]I am more of an American that I ever was a Finn.[/B] Not that I'm saying that I'm not a Finn. I'm very proud of that fact, and I'd love to move to Helsinki! It's just that America is my home, and always will be. Even though my homeland is Finland, the US is where my heart is.

So to answer your question, I feel like it could go either way. I felt like I had SOME kind of a hold onto the Finnish culture because I knew the Finnish language (it didn't hurt at all), but yet I felt distant from it, because I hadn't experienced all those Finnish things that one would experience growing up in Finland, and spending time there. I think one could experience the culture of one's home without the language (almost like myself), but it certainly helps, because it DOES play a part.