Altitudes Affect Language Sounds And The Way It Is Spoken?

A University of Miami anthropological linguist found a strong link between altitude and spoken language.

For a long time now linguists have believed that the only link between spoken language and the natural world was the influence of the environment on vocabulary. However, in a new study by Caleb Everett, associate professor of anthropology, in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Miami, the linguist was able to find a direct link between how language is spoken and geographical elevation.

According to the findings of this study, languages spoken with ejective sounds that are made with a burst of air are usually spoken in places of higher altitudes. These ejective sounds are not present in the English language. The study revealed that 87 percent of languages with ejective sounds are spoken in areas within a 500 km radius of elevated regions. The higher the altitude of a region, the more likely are the chances of ejective languages been spoken in that area.

Researchers have revealed in the past that "This is really strong evidence that geography does influence phonology-the sound system of languages," says Everett. The study is titled "Evidence for Direct Geographic Influences on Linguistic Sounds: The case of ejectives."

For the study, the author analyzed the locations of about 600 representative languages of the 7000 or so languages of the world. 92 of these languages had ejectives. He utilized the World Atlas of Linguistic Structures - the most comprehensive survey of linguistic sounds. Everett imported the coordinates of these languages into the geographic software of Google Earth and ArcGIS v. 10.0, then superimposed the locations of these sound systems on the world's landscape to analyze the patterns.

However, Everett also found that the only region with high altitude where languages with ejectives are absent is Tibet and the adjacent areas. People of this region have a unique adaptation to high altitude that may account for this fact.

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