Language: The Gateway To Culture

The local language is the preferred route to understand the culture due to 2 reasons:

1. Most people don’t speak English very well, due to their learning it as a second or third language. These people do not represent the real sampling of the country's population, just being the better-educated cosmopolitans who speak a global language.
2. Most translations are poor substitutes for the real cultural essence, and a person needs to learn the original language to fully understand the context and culture.