I am interested in both cultures and languages so I think they go together and you won’t be a good second language learner unless you learn the culture that belong to that language.

Florian,

I’m very interested in what (parts of) American culture you learned about as you studied English. When someone is outside a culture, they tend to believe that the culture is a unified “thing” that they are getting or not, and this can be based on some ideal. But cultures are complicated, and how we define them is complicated.

Not every member of a culture fits the ideal. More than that, there can be dissidents and cultural rebels.

Also, since each of the major world languages are spoken across different countries that have different cultures, I think it is possible to be bicultural and not bilingual in that way. Ask English speakers who move to another English speaking country.

This is especially true for widely used languages like Spanish, French, or Arabic. 20+ countries speak Spanish, 20+ speak Arabic, and 30+ countries speak French. So, for example, a Latino who travels to different Spanish-speaking countries can be influenced by 5+ countries while remaining monolingual (speak only Spanish).

I think you can aproach some good level of foreign language without any immertion to it's culture, but if you want to achive an advanced knoweledge of ech you need to go further and deeper. So without knowing the culture you can't understand it on really high level.

I agree, the question is not easy but I don't think it's possible. One thing is being exposed to some part of a culture and idealize it, another is living it.

If you don't know the language you can't think in that language so you're far from understanding the reality of that structure.

When you live in a different country and you stay there for a long period of time things change again.

Maybe you can have an idealization of that culture but not be that culture. I've lived in many different countries and lost a bit of mine and acquired a bit of theirs. And even more, people that are not open minded, could live years in a different country without changing a bit!