The reading for this week acknowledges the plethora of languages that exist in the world and how they can be related and categorized to and with each other. The reading highlights different language "Families" and how these families form the languages and, where the languages are used today.
Recognizing language families is very important because it gives us a greater understanding of History, and in many cases can help you better learn and understand words and grammar for a language based on other languages in that family. Basically what a language family is, is a collection of languages that can all be traced back to a common ancestor from which, in some way, all the languages in the family were formed. These daughter languages that are formed can be found to have similar language tools. In many instances words are very similar to each other, which i think is apparent as an English speaking person when studying Spanish or French. especially because they use the same alphabet. However even some languages that do not use the same alphabet can be similar which I have noticed when studying Hebrew. It is amazing how other languages and cultures have so much influence over each other, such as English and Hebrew whose modern calenders sound very similar.
As someone who loves and appreciates the value that History has in the world this section I found to be very interesting. I believe it is very important to know where you come from, and language is a very big part of that history. For all i know even certain families may have individual speaking nuances that are unique to them and that can be traced back for generations. I think it is important to recognize that even though something, in this case languages, may appear to be so very different, they can in fact be discovered to be more similar than anyone thought possible.
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