[jasonjei]

I think what the writer means to say is there is a cultural aspect to language for words that don’t have direct equivalents in other languages.

Interestingly, Chinese colloquially refers to languages as the same as culture. For example, Chinese is 中文, literally Chinese culture; English 英文, English culture; Japanese 日文, Japanese culture. The suffix 文 signifies culture.

There is also the word 語 and 語言 to signify language; this is more formal but without the connotation of culture. But my point is culture is indelibly tied to language.

[hnfong]

I hesitate to nitpick on you given your surname, but I haven't seen 中文 (or any other _文) referring to culture specifically, as opposed to language.

My understanding is that 文 (in this context) refers to the written language, whereas 語 and 語言 refers to the spoken language. Which is why we say 寫中文 instead of 寫中語. 語 and 文 often gets mixed up, but the nitty-picky-correct way should be what I described.

FWIW here in Hong Kong we have a term "兩文三語" which means two written (Chinese and English) and three spoken languages (Cantonese, Mandarin and English).

[glandium]

> The suffix 文 signifies culture.

文 has a broad meaning. Here it would be

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E6%96%87#Pronunciation_1 8. (written) language.

(as opposed to spoken language, which is what 語 is)