I was just thinking about an example of the interwoven nature of language and culture. Please bear with me.

A number of people have observed that my personality seems completely different when I'm speaking Japanese rather than English. I wasn't completely conscious of it until it was first pointed out to me by an ex. In "Japanese mode," I apparently come across as much more polite, but also vague, indirect, and even a bit wishy-washy. But in my native language, as you guys probably know by now, I'm sort of a cross between a sledgehammer and sandpaper.

I don't think this is entirely due to linguistic differences. However, culture alone couldn't be the sole factor either. Even if one were to generalize and say, "Japanese are polite and indirect," I personally have no motivation to be more polite and indirect than usual regardless of what language I'm using. It's almost as if the language itself acts like a filter or encryption/decryption device.

Anyway, I am of the opinion that while language and culture are not completely indivisible, they are so closely intertwined to seem so. Putting aside complex grammatical conventions and such, you simply need knowledge of a culture in order to have anything more than a truly basic understanding of a language, and the reverse is also true in many cases.

If I said "Hanami ni iku," and you didn't know any Japanese except for basic nouns and verbs and such, you'd probably look at me funny because men in Western cultures don't usually go around admiring flowers. Without understanding something about the culture, you wouldn't know that this "flower viewing" is a spring festival that was once tied to the yearly harvest and is nowadays is mostly an excuse to drink outdoors. Context is everything.

Just like how "a picture is worth a thousand words," a word can be worth a thousand units of cultural information. The nuance (or just plain baggage) a word carries with it can be tremendous. Think about the word "kamikaze." It literally means "divine wind" which doesn't make much sense unless you know something about Japanese history, in which case you'd realize that the context is, "gigantic storm that decimated an invading Mongol fleet." But around 1945 it acquired an entirely new meaning only loosely based on the original context.

Even something as innocuous as a sequence of numbers (like dates) can have deep meanings. July 4th has a special meaning to Americans because of our shared culture. A 9 followed by two 1's also has two distinct meanings for us-- a phone number for emergencies and a date for a terrifying disaster. In one particular country, the date June 4th carries a special meaning, but not to everyone. Due to massive media censorship, it's just another summer day to most young people there. Language is powerful in this way-- control it (in the Orwellian sense) and you can control culture to a great extent.

That's all I have to say about language. As for America, I think it does have a "culture" of its own, even apart from founding fathers and celebrities and apple pie. It really is a melting pot, though-- When you keep adding ingredients to a big stew over a long period of time, those separate ingredients will become more and more difficult to separate and identify, even though any of them could have been a complete meal on their own. Some will dissolve and become practically unnoticed, and others will bring out more flavor. But it's all part of the meal and hopefully the spoonful you get at any given time will taste okay.

...Well, that's more than enough rambling from me. Carry on.