As I look back now how I came to completely lose my interest in linguistics in the past three years or so, I notice that there still remains one area of linguistics that still interests me - interaction between language and culture, whose study is called cultural linguistics, anthropological linguistics, or ethnolinguistics - and this area also happens to be the very thing that first kindled my interest in what I later came to know as linguistics when I stumbled upon one such book as a high school student.
But my interest in ethnolinguistics is more practical than theoretical, especially in the context of my continued study of Russian. Though I still have a lot to learn to improve my grammatical and lexical knowledge of this difficult language, I've also started to learn books and dictionaries for increasing my linguocultural literacy - лингвокультурная грамотность in Russian - of Russian, or literacy of Russian culture that manifests itself in the language.
One of the things I really love and admire in Russian intellectual culture is its investment in and love for good dictionaries. Russia is one of the superpowers in practical lexicography, or dictionary making, in the world, probably together with England and Japan, among others.
Recenly one pedagogical dictionary of linguocultural literacy of Russian was published in Russian - Ключ к русской культуре: словарь лингвокультурной грамотности. I couldn't resist the temptation of acquiring a copy of such a dictionary, so I ordered one and received it within a week or so. Russian has another, more comprehensive and more academic, dictionary of linguocultural literacy - Лингвострановедческий словарь «Россия».
I'm not aware of such pedagogical dictionaries of linguocultural literacy for other languages, at least not in such a learner-friendly manner. But this may also be due to my lack of knowledge.
Leafing through the first dictionary mentioned above, I've been telling myself that such a dictionary can help newly observant Jews, be it for Hebrew or English, especially if they have become haredim. The so-called tshuva also involves acquiring new linguocultural literacy, which, to the best of my knowledge, is documented nowhere, and each new baal tshuva has to acquire this literacy through trial and error.