A second "first language"

On analogy with learning another language, Maclntyre argues that the only way to learn another tradition is to learn it as a “second first language.” Because traditions are “languages-in-use”—their way of reasoning is inextricably tied to the concrete cultural life of the community that bears the tradition—learning a second first language cannot be done simply by matching sentences from one’s second language to one’s first (as if using a basic-phrase travel guide to a foreign country). Such sentence matching can only produce “tokens,” discrete phrases that can work effectively within very limited circumstances to achieve a desired effect (for example, Wo sind die Toiletten? = Where is the bathroom?). Producing tokens should not be confused with learning a language well enough to move fluidly within the cultural patterns that are the language’s lived expression. Rather, “the learning of a language and the acquisition of cultural understanding are not two independent activities.” If traditions are lived languages, then, they must be “learned as second first languages or not at all."—One True Life: The Stoics and Early Christians as Rival Traditions, 202

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Boy, ain't that the truth! That's why interlinears are worthless. And why trying to learn a language as an exercise in "decoding" is a waste. Languages represent a culture; they express a way of life. I like this idea of learning a culture as a "second first language." Naming it as such makes sense of some of the things I've been noticing in my approach to the ANE and biblical texts.

They are alive in a different way than they used to be. Could it be that finally after almost 45 years I'm starting to internalize some of this stuff? (Well, in fairness, it's been happening for longer than recently, but I just noticed it moreso recently.)
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