We can learn new things without using languages. Look at children—they learn their culture (usually that of parents) first, then the language. We enter the world of language-based learning once we have mastered a language, but learning starts way before language acquisition.
In other words, language can’t exhaust culture (and mind). And understanding language means understanding its culture, because all languages will show culture-language connections if we look for it.
When you paraphrase something in your own words, you are forcing yourself to incorporate that something into your own worldview. This is probably why taking notes in your own words does wonder, compared to merely copy and pasting the sentences.
Related Notes:
10-1b4 Children concentrically embody their ever-widening knowledge structures by testing the degree of its correspondence in comparison with other members of the society
3-1b1b1 No learning without doing; specifically, no learning without cultural doing
10-1b6 Culture ⇒ Culturally invented symbols ⇒ Language (Culture invents things. Everyone is part of a culture. Every individual learning take place within culture. Every invention is built up over time, including language.)