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Every other Friday, the Outside/In team answers a listener question about the natural world. Got a question of your own? The Outside/In team is here to answer your questions. Call 844-GO-OTTER to leave us a message.

Outside/Inbox: Does the environment influence the evolution of a language?

A green, folded landscape, fogbanks rolling in between the hills. The fog is mirrors the same size and shape of the hills.
Seán Roberts
A photo by Seán Roberts on a recent hike near his house in Wales, which prompted him to recall the conclusion of a research paper he co-authored on the impact of environment on language. "Ultimately, all members of our species live at the bottom of an ocean of air. But we live in different seas that vary in sundry ways. Just as we would when examining the communication of any other species, we should examine carefully whether this ecological variation results in adaptive effects on speech. "

Every other Friday, the Outside/In team here at NHPR answers listener questions about the natural world.

“I have heard in the past that various languages across the world were influenced by the way the human voice echoes or reacts with the topography of different regions. Could you explore this topic, and see if there's any truth to that?” asked Jackson, calling from South Florida.

To submit a question to the Outside/In team, you can record it as a voice memo on your smartphone and send it to outsidein@nhpr.org. You can also leave a message on our hotline, 1-844-GO-OTTER. No question is too serious or too silly.


Transcript

This has been lightly edited for clarity.

Justine Paradis: The diversity of human languages across the world is vast. Some languages are tonal, like Mandarin.

Mahjong by RTB45 on freesound.org

Justine Paradis: Some incorporate sounds, like clicks in the language of the San people in South Africa.

Click language San Tribe South Africa, erilee on FreeSound.org 

Justine Paradis: Even between closely related languages, speaking a new one can mean literally learning new ways of using your mouth.

Repeat after me, aisselles on Freesound.org: Repeat after me. Le drapeau. Le dra– [laugh]. Peau, peau, peau, peau. 

Justine Paradis: Language is embodied, so is it possible that the interaction between our bodies and the landscape we live in plays a role in how languages form? Seán Roberts is a linguist at Cardiff University in Wales, and he thinks it’s possible. 

Seán Roberts: There's 7000 languages in the world, which is more than people think… because we're used to thinking about the major world languages. Most languages in the world are spoken by a small number of people in a relatively local place. And actually, their  language is probably really adapted to the kinds of things that they care about… and the way that they need to communicate. 

Justine Paradis: Researchers have found some correlations between environment and language. Like, the world’s biodiversity hotspots are often the very same places with a lot of linguistic diversity. 

Seán Roberts: Yeah, and that's a really interesting question. We're not really sure why that is.

Justine Paradis: The factors behind the evolution of a language are complex. They might include war, contact with other  cultures, technology, lifestyle. But does the list include landscape? The answer is, we don’t know yet. The question needs more study. Not that people haven’t tried. 

Recently, one of Seán’s colleagues, Caleb Everett, came up with a hypothesis, focusing on the physical structure of our throats. Our vocal folds need moisture to produce sound, especially vowels. So, when it’s dry, our vocal cords don’t work as efficiently. 

Seán Roberts: If you've ever had a dry throat and tried to sing, then your voice comes out really creaky. What's happening is that your vocal folds are not behaving properly… and so it's hard to control the pitch of your voice.

Justine Paradis: So, perhaps a drier climate could impact the evolution of a language over time, specifically with tonal languages like Mandarin, which require fine-tuned control of the vocal folds. But linguists are often quite skeptical of claims like this, as Seán and his colleagues experienced firsthand, when they presented the theory at a conference in 2024.

Seán Roberts: In this meeting [laughs], we sort of got bombarded by lots of different objections, criticisms. You know, the scientific process. The linguists came along and said, oh, well, languages are related to each other, so they borrow features from each other. The geographers were like, well, languages next to each other tend to be in the same kind of environment… the people in climate science said, well, the climate has changed over the last 10,000 years, so how do you control for that?

Justine Paradis: After this meeting, Seán and his colleagues responded to the feedback by building a model to crunch huge datasets, and to try to control for all these factors. A lot of work for a seemingly simple question: does living in a dry climate mean a loss in tone?

Seán Roberts: And after all that, the answer was no… There’s no evidence that these things work together.

Justine Paradis: That may sound like a failure, but Seán doesn’t see it that way. It’s just the scientific process. For now, he’s excited to  refine the model, and to use it to keep exploring this and other exciting questions.  

Seán Roberts: Not just about language, but about human migration and what it means to be a human.


Outside/In is a podcast! Subscribe wherever you get yours.

Justine Paradis is a producer and reporter for NHPR's Creative Production Unit, most oftenOutside/In. Before NHPR, she produced Millennial podcast from Radiotopia, contributed to podcasts including Love + Radio, and reported for WCAI & WGBH from her hometown of Nantucket island.
Outside/In is a show where curiosity and the natural world collide. Click here for podcast episodes and more.
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