Study published by linguists claim that the region you live in determines the way you speak

For years, scientists have grappled with the question of whether climate and geography play a role in shaping the way people speak. While some argue that environmental factors have minimal impact on language sonority, others assert that various elements, from temperature to elevation, exert influence. A recent and notable study, conducted by linguists and published in the online journal PNAS Nexus, suggests that languages spoken in warmer climates, particularly in the tropics, exhibit greater loudness compared to those spoken in colder regions.

Dr. Søren Wichmann and colleagues from China presented their study titled “Temperature shapes language sonority: Revalidation from a large dataset,” wherein they demonstrated that the average ambient temperature correlates with the loudness of languages. Wichmann stated that, in general, languages in warmer regions tend to be louder than those in colder regions.

Explaining the methodology, Wichmann simplified the study, stating that when people speak or listen, they are surrounded by air, and the physical properties of air influence the production and perception of spoken words, which are transmitted as sound waves. He pointed out that the dryness of cold air poses challenges to the production of voiced sounds requiring vocal cord vibrations, while warm air tends to limit unvoiced sounds by absorbing their high-frequency energy.

To reach their conclusions, Wichmann and his colleagues utilized the Automated Similarity Judgment Program (ASJP) database, housing the basic vocabulary of 5,293 languages. The researchers discovered that languages near the Equator and in the Southern Hemisphere displayed high mean sonority indexes (MSI), with Oceania featuring some of the highest MSIs.

Despite this trend, there were exceptions, such as Mesoamerica and Mainland Southeast Asia, which showed lower MSIs despite being tropical. The researchers suggested that this exception implies that the effect of temperature on sonority evolves gradually over centuries or even millennia. Nevertheless, a clear relationship between the mean sonority of language families and the mean annual temperature was established.

Notably, the Salish languages on the northwest coast of North America hold the world record for low sonority. The insights gained from such studies could aid scientists in understanding how languages evolved due to the migration of Homo sapiens across the planet, providing clues about the environments of their precursor languages.