What is the relationship between language and culture?

Question

Does a language determine the thinking of people or is culture something that exists outside of the thought processes of people? I language and culture an extension of the same thing or not? Where does language begin and where does culture end?

Answer 1

www.carla.umn.edu/bibliography/ may have a good outline of the info that you are looking for. I wish you luck

Answer 2

I think that language and culture are bond to a such point that the one indicates the other. There is also an other element,that you missed to refer. Tradition. So we have a trilogy. Language , culture, tradition.
Examples.
Hellenes --->Greek
Jews --->Hebrew
Persians --->Farsi
Indians --->Sanskrit
Chinese --->Mandarin/Cantonese.

These bonds are very old and strong and it is very difficult to be broken.
It is like the roots of a tree. If a tree looses its roots it is easy to fall.
if a language is lost the culture is lost too.
ie. South America, in some civilisations languages are missed and the natives still survive through tradition which is not exactly what is called culture.

Answer 3

I dont think language has anything to do with culture. For example I knew some people from Germany, who I expected since they spoke german they automatically I assumed they were very strict families. I was completely wrong. I guess culture wise its all depends on what each individual family agree's upon.

Answer 4

language is a reflection of the culture that developed it. take American English for example; it is always changing, we experience new words and sayings all the time because our common culture allows us to understand intuitively something that "one of our own" has expressed.
albeit, sometimes it is a little hard to understand the knucklehead!! hmm...