Jul 15, 2025 02:55 PM
https://www.zmescience.com/science/news-...languages/
INTRO: In the icy tundra of Siberia, people speak in tightly wound sounds with consonants packed like frozen gravel. A few thousand miles to the south, under the humid canopy of Papua New Guinea, speech flows much differently: vowels swell and ripple while syllables spread open like sun-warmed petals. These are not just cultural quirks. According to some scientists, they may reflect a complex interplay between language and the climate.
A team of linguists analyzed the basic vocabularies of more than 5,000 languages and found a striking pattern: languages that developed in warmer climates tend to sound more resonant, what linguists call more “sonorous.” That means more vowels, more flowing sounds, more openness in the mouth. In short, these languages sound louder. Meanwhile, languages born in colder places are more clipped, more congested with consonants.
The differences can even be pinned to the very physics of speech. Sound travels through air. And air, as it turns out, behaves differently when it’s warm.
“Generally speaking, languages in warmer regions are louder than those in colder regions,” said Dr. Søren Wichmann, a linguist at Kiel University and co-author of the study that appeared in 2023 in the journal PNAS Nexus.
“Sonority” is a measure that blends loudness, resonance, and openness of speech sounds. Words filled with vowels — like open or mouth — are more sonorous than those packed with hissing consonants, like lips or crisp. Sonorants, such as vowels and nasal sounds, travel farther and resist distortion better than obstruents — harder sounds like k, t, or s.
Using a massive linguistic dataset known as the ASJP (Automated Similarity Judgment Program), the researchers computed a “mean sonority index” for each language and mapped them onto global climate data. Their results revealed a compelling trend: languages near the equator, especially in Oceania and Africa, had the highest sonority values. Those in colder regions, like the Salish languages of North America’s northwest coast, exhibited the lowest... (MORE - details)
INTRO: In the icy tundra of Siberia, people speak in tightly wound sounds with consonants packed like frozen gravel. A few thousand miles to the south, under the humid canopy of Papua New Guinea, speech flows much differently: vowels swell and ripple while syllables spread open like sun-warmed petals. These are not just cultural quirks. According to some scientists, they may reflect a complex interplay between language and the climate.
A team of linguists analyzed the basic vocabularies of more than 5,000 languages and found a striking pattern: languages that developed in warmer climates tend to sound more resonant, what linguists call more “sonorous.” That means more vowels, more flowing sounds, more openness in the mouth. In short, these languages sound louder. Meanwhile, languages born in colder places are more clipped, more congested with consonants.
The differences can even be pinned to the very physics of speech. Sound travels through air. And air, as it turns out, behaves differently when it’s warm.
“Generally speaking, languages in warmer regions are louder than those in colder regions,” said Dr. Søren Wichmann, a linguist at Kiel University and co-author of the study that appeared in 2023 in the journal PNAS Nexus.
“Sonority” is a measure that blends loudness, resonance, and openness of speech sounds. Words filled with vowels — like open or mouth — are more sonorous than those packed with hissing consonants, like lips or crisp. Sonorants, such as vowels and nasal sounds, travel farther and resist distortion better than obstruents — harder sounds like k, t, or s.
Using a massive linguistic dataset known as the ASJP (Automated Similarity Judgment Program), the researchers computed a “mean sonority index” for each language and mapped them onto global climate data. Their results revealed a compelling trend: languages near the equator, especially in Oceania and Africa, had the highest sonority values. Those in colder regions, like the Salish languages of North America’s northwest coast, exhibited the lowest... (MORE - details)
