week two response

This week, the topic of language was incredibly interesting to me. I knew that many languages have been wiped out, but I was not aware of the sheer volume of languages -- not just dialects -- that have gone missing. It is interesting to me that so many different nations, tribes, and communities had different languages. If there were similarities or differences, where did they lie? From previous classes, I know that many sounds, particularly palate-oriented sounds, cross language boundaries, but I'm not sure how those similarities came to be.

I feel that my background knowledge grew a lot with these readings to help me interpret what we are studying and will continue to study in class. For example, I was not aware that many nations and tribes had social hierarchies. That is something that history textbooks never cover (if they cover Indigenous history at all) and I experienced a bit of cognitive dissonance over the fact that I had never considered it before. Nevertheless, it has inspired me to do some reading on the topic outside of class to further grow my foundation of knowledge that will help me get the most out of this course.