The culture of your target language

Your target language is the reflection of its culture.

By being aware of certain social norms you can get closer to native speakers because they will feel as you are “one of them”. And I am talking from experience! 

When you start studying the culture of the country, besides cultural knowledge, you will automatically learn words that are really important in the culture and thus, in the language as well. You will speak more native-like, and sound less “learned it from a book”-ish, if you know what I mean.

Use the questions I list below to discover the culture of your target language! 

First the most obvious: Try searching “things ‘insert target language’ people do” for example “Things German people do” on Youtube. This will give you English results which is great for beginners. It is usually native speakers talking in English about things they do that might be uncommon in other countries. It is a great introduction to the culture. If you have a tandem language partner you can ask them to make a list for you of things that are unique to their country.

Music is a great window to the culture of a country. Observe what they sing often about, what cultural references they use. What are the main topics of the songs? What can you see in the video? Google words, names, places that they mention to gain a little insight. 

Once you find artists follow them on Instagram to have a better understanding of the culture. They might not have an average life, but they usually portray an image of what average people look up to, try to achieve. What do they do often? How do they dress? What do their followers compliment them on? What are the comments about? How do they decorate their house? Everybody seems to be the same and post the same things on Instagram all over the world, but there are still some little cultural differences you can pick up on. You can also deep-dive and stalk some of the people commenting to see what they post about. 

Youtube vlogs are also great! Yes, they are also exaggerated a little (or a lot) but you can hear everyday conversations, things they focus on. How do they greet eachother? How do they talk to eachother and what topics do they talk about? Do they dance, listen to music a lot? Do they often have friends over?  What do women and men do around the house? What jobs do they have? How do they talk about other people? What do they talk about with friends? How do they welcome guests? How do they treat their kids, what kind of activities do they do with them? How do they talk to kids in general? How do they talk with their spouses? Do they show affection or are they more reserved? If they are single how do they talk about dating? What do they do on dates? 

To give you an idea let me show you what I mean exactly by showing you a few of the things I’ve found out about Brazilians based on Youtube vlogs and music:

They really appreciate physical beauty: They almost only show extremely beautiful people (men and women) in their music videos and talk about beauty in the lyrics and they are also seen looking at and appreciating good looking people in the videos. Women apologize in vlogs when they are not done up and are seen using face masks, putting on makeup, going to a beauty salon a lot. You can also find a lot of vlogs about various beauty-enhancing procedures. Men make sure they wear stylish clothes and they talk about style and appearance a lot between eachother. They also get a lot of comments praising their looks. 

They love grill parties (churrasco): seen in a lot of music videos and vlog, there are even songs about it! They use every opportunity to get the grill going.

They love food in general: They talk about food a lot and often eat or cook in music videos and vlogs.

They love music and they love to dance: You can also see in a lot of vlogs that they listen to music a lot, they are not afraid to dance and often play instruments at parties.

They employ cleaning personnel: it can also be observed in both music videos and vlogs that it is common to hire people to clean the house on a regular basis.

There is a clear gap between rich ad poor: it also a topic they like to sing about and something that is often the topic of music videos as well, where for example a boy is in love with a girl but the girl is rich so it is unlikely that she would be interested in him, or a girl is cleaning the house of a rich family dreaming about having nice things as well… etc.

Soap operas are also great to observe a culture although they might not be available in every language. You can ask the same questions I listed previously, as they are kind of alike in this case. 

And an bonus one that you might have not thought about: Gossip sites! What are the recurring topics and how do they deliver it? What do commenters have to say about the issue? What behaviors are seen as shocking or unacceptable in that culture? Follow some of the celebrities mentioned and ask the questions I list in the paragraph about Instagram.

Happy soap opera watching hahaha,

Zsófi

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