Our environment and climate can change the way we speak

Many factors influence our languages ​​and accents: where we live, where we grew up, what our parents sounded like. But in recent years, researchers have been looking into another possible influence: climate.

The idea that climate affects language is not new, but only recently have researchers had the tools to properly investigate the hypothesis. Now, large databases of languages ​​from around the world, along with the computing power to look for patterns in those languages ​​and match them with climate data, make it possible to see whether climate influences language, and if so, com.

How the environment affects language

Caleb Everettan anthropologist who studies language across the world’s cultures, says linguists generally agree that in languages, there is a bias toward what experts call “articulatory ease.” In other words, we tend to use sounds that are easy to make. But what is easy to do may depend on environmental conditions. Some sounds are more difficult to make if the vocal cords are very dry. (That’s why singers are careful to keep their vocal cords from drying out, he notes.)

In a 2017 paper, Everett and colleagues analyzed thousands of languages from two databases and found support for the idea that languages ​​from very dry places rely less on vowels than languages ​​from humid areas.

More recently, research published in 2023 analyzed data from over 1,000 languages ​​and found that the languages ​​of the hot zones were more vowel-basedand those in wet areas employed more complex tonal sounds. Meanwhile, languages ​​spoken at higher altitudes used more ejective consonants. They are small explosions that occur when the vocal cords are closed, he explains Ian Maddiesonlinguist and lead author of the 2023 paper.

Forest cover also plays a role. Much of the inspiration for this work came from studies of birdsong, says Maddieson. One of the variables that predicts the complexity of birdsong is the relative complexity of the local vegetation, he explains.

“If there’s an area with a lot of obstructive plants, the song is simplified because transmission through that kind of environment is less effective and will disrupt a complex song that has a lot of trills and changes,” says Maddieson. In dense vegetation and high humidity, simple is more effective.

Read more: Language evolves over time and islands can promote linguistic diversity

Human migration and language evolution

The mobility of humans over the past 50 to 100 years, however, means that other factors may soon overwhelm the climate effect, Maddieson says. Again, birds provide an interesting parallel. When birds move into an urban area with a lot of background noise, they have to change their songs to hear themselves over the noise of the city. Either they simplify the song so that it is less masked by the sound, or they sing at a higher pitch to be heard above the traffic noise.

And like birdsong, human language changes when people of many different languages ​​live in the same place and try to make themselves understood.

“People who come together with different languages ​​and come to some kind of compromise between the contributions of the different languages ​​can have such a strong impact on the future of so many languages ​​that it can be very difficult to detect other kinds of effects, such as the of the climate,” says Maddieson.

Read more: When did humans evolve language?

Will climate change alter our voices?

Does the fact that the climate is changing mean that human speech will change in response? possibly Maddieson estimates that vocal adaptations to climate could take 300 to 500 years to become part of a language. This means that after 300 or 400 years of climate change, speech patterns around the world could be markedly different.

Over time, says Maddieson, if these theories are correct, basic changes in environmental conditions would have an impact on languages.

However, he adds: “If the planet continues to warm as much as it is now, there will be no people in large parts of the world.”

Read more: A new look at our linguistic roots

Article sources

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Avery Hurt is a freelance science journalist. In addition to writing for Discover, he writes regularly for various outlets, both print and online, including National Geographic, Science News Explores, Medscape, and WebMD. She is the author of Bullet With Your Name on It: What You Will Die From and What You Can Do About It, Clerisy Press 2007, as well as several books for young readers. Avery got her start in journalism while in college, writing for the school newspaper and editing the student non-fiction magazine. Although she writes about all areas of science, she is particularly interested in neuroscience, the science of consciousness, and the interests in AI that she developed while earning a degree in philosophy.