Language and Environment Pt. 1 (Puget Sound)

Throughout the ages, humans have relied on verbal communication to communicate with one another. Through this, language was born, one of man’s most important tools. Humans have assigned specific names to certain things and used terms to describe specific characteristics. When the native Puget Sound Natives lived freely around the mountain, they used the word “Tacoma” to refer to the mountain peak, meaning “The Mountain That Was God”. The reasoning behind this was that the mountain was, and still is, massive and served as a hunting ground and a place for spiritual practices. The mountain had become cultural for these people. When British explorers came to the west coast of the United States, they renamed the mountain to Rainier after Rear Admiral Peter Rainier, erasing the name given to it previously. In this specific example, the environment impacted language. The Puget Sound Natives saw this mountain as something greater than them and as a result, used language to transform the mountain into something larger and more meaningful than it was. 


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