It provides the means by which learned customs and skills pass from one generation to the next. Because languages vary spatially, they reinforce the sense of region and space. A person may voluntarily change their religion, but not their language. Languages are tongues that cannot be mutually understood, differing from dialects variant forms of a language that have not lost mutual comprehension. Some 6,500 languages, and many more dialects, are spoken by human- kind today.
Language is a key aspect of culture.
So important is language that people who have lost their language are not longer form a distinct cultural group. Adaptation of another language may be the first sign of cultural assimilation. Some view language adoption and cultural assimilation positively while others do not. Through your readings above and MAP 18 World Religions, you should be familiar with the fundamentals of each of the world religions listed on MAP 18, and their distributions across the globe.