Local Climate Influences How Languages Sound
How the weather and the geography shape the languages we speak and the words we use. Are similar-sounding languages spoken in similar weather?
On a late May evening, I was sitting cramped between my two neighbors at a corner terrace on my new street. The seven people huddled around the square table formed a tight circle around it. Personal space has a different meaning in Spain compared to other countries. Everyone was talking at the same time. Well, everyone but me. Two parallel conversations were taking place, the sounds crossing each other diagonally. Everyone seemed to perfectly understand one another. Everyone but me. I was sitting back, both for a bit of air from the cramped huddle and also for a better glimpse at people communicating in this literal Babel Tower table of sounds and sentences.
The vowel-filled Spanish words flew out of their open mouths, dancing like butterflies after escaping their cage. Some of them were chirping fast and loud, a constant stream of sounds coming out, like parrots trying to imitate everyone around. Well, parrots that live in warm and humid climates, that is.
Other neighbors were more mellow. Taking longer to pronounce the words, their lips and voices tangoed around the vowels of maravilloso, aplazar las vacaciones or a ver qué hacemos mañana. It was a dance; lips barely touched one another, only the occasional consonant bound the vowels together into words.
I had recently moved to Spain and my auditive memory was still full of similar bar conversations back in Germany, where I’d lived before that. But in German bars the sound vibes were more guttural, the German words would come out of people’s mouths with more obstacles. The abundant consonants German words have would act as roadblocks for the scarce vowels in words such as Urlaub verschieben or was kann man morgen tun. I could swear I saw people pause and close their mouths every time the bar door would open and a fresh chilled wave of the outside blizzard would sweep in. The consonants, forcing people to close their mouths more often, acted as protection against the cold weather reaching their throats and lungs.
Weather and vocabulary
The climate where we live shapes not just how we speak, but the vocabulary we use as well. Would it surprise anyone if the British had more words to refer to ‘rain’ than the Spanish, say? In the regions with plenty of rain, people have come up with just as many different words to describe the different kinds. Words such as ‘drizzle’, ‘downpour’, ‘cloudburst’ or ‘pelting down’ are visual and acoustic, allowing people to better describe what might affect their lives. The crops are affected in different ways under a drizzle than under a downpour. The animal shelters or the subway entrances as well. It’s important to have access to language variations for these meteorological events.
People invent new expressions for the things they see more often. They create new ways of communicating what they experience, to relate to others in the same situation.
As weather influences our mood, it’s only natural that it also influences what and how we speak as well. We adjust how we communicate depending on the weather: we open or close our mouths more; we find unique, sometimes funny ways to express what we experience (hello French expression: il pleut comme vache qui pisse, i.e. it rains as if the cows are peeing).
Language and the outside temperature
Languages in warm climates have evolved to have plenty of vowels. They are spoken with the mouth wide open, just like my new friends in Spain did that evening at the terrace bar. Imagine listening to someone speak Italian. The words would flow out, dancing in the air. Now imagine someone speaking French, especially with a southern accent. The words are drawn out more, the vowels are more open than speakers in the northern part of the country.
Would it be a stretch to assume that the similarity in Italian and southern French phonetics is due to a similarity in the two regions’ climates? Linguist Ian Maddieson supports this idea: “consonant-light languages like Hawaiian are more likely to be found in lush, hot ecologies.”
If we look to the other side of the temperature spectrum, speech in cold areas is short and sharp. The languages are “consonant-thick”, as Maddieson also states. That expression makes me think of a warm blanket.
The colder the region, the simpler the language gets. For example, Danish or Swedish don’t use genders in their grammar. They use the same nouns to refer to the different genders, relying on context to make themselves understood. They also use fewer prepositions than Latin-derived languages. The reason is the same: to cut short the amount of sounds they pronounce. These northern peoples might have developed their languages to avoid speaking for longer than necessary. The shorter the words and sentences, the more filled they are with consonants, the less they have to open their mouths and inhale the cold, dry air.
Language and geography
When we think of geographies, the role of the language in getting the message across becomes quite literal. The sounds we speak need to go through either the thick foliage of trees or beat the winds, or they need to travel through vast areas. In wide-open spaces like plains or valleys, the sounds float easier towards the other person. The language can be more long-winded and carefree carrying diverse tonalities on the wings of the air, especially if the air is humid.
In the forest though, the consonants don’t travel far as their closed sounds are stopped by the physicality of the tree trunks, branches and leaves. It’s the same in windy areas where the consonant-heavy sounds would get crushed under the howling of the wind. It seems that languages that are spoken in such geographies have developed to include more vowels, which can be sustained longer and can cut through thick forests, mountain ranges or gusts of wind.
Imagine saying ‘alohaaa’ and sustaining the last sound for four to five seconds. The open-mouthed ‘a’ carries the sound through space, cutting through obstacles. While if you want to shout consonant-heavy words like ‘split’ or ‘jump’, you can already imagine how they won’t travel far in compact geographies like forests.
Bird language and climate
Humans are not the only ones who have developed varieties in their languages depending on the geography and climate. The research done by linguists all over the world takes inspiration from the animal kingdom. Apparently, the birdsong in forested areas is different than the birdsong in other geographies. Just like humans (or maybe the other way around!), birds sing songs with fewer consonant-like sounds while in the forest. The same logic applies, more consonants would bump into branches and leaves, blocking the sounds, and would prevent the birds from communicating with one another.
The sounds of the pub
So, it turns out the difference in speech between Germans and the Spanish wasn’t random. In the German pub, surrounded by frost, my German friends used shorter words, with more consonants in them. While down south at that Spanish terrace, the trill-like, vowel-filled sounds people made were not just impressive to the unaccustomed ear, but also closely related to the weather.
In our ultra-modern, terribly digital, hyper-comfortable lives, we might forget sometimes how tightly linked we are to the surrounding land. Our bodies can almost merge with the grass, the sea or the insects during summer, while the languages we developed are closely shaped by the climate in which we live and breathe.
I like your observations, although the map you included seems to largely go against your hypothesis—some of the places which have the most consonant thick languages are basically all of South Asia, a mostly incredibly hot and humid area where 1/5 or so of the entire world lives (and of course, we speak about the INDO-European languages—so there is a direct connection with your European examples, but not with climactic correlation), as well as Southern Africa, the source of all humans, another super hot area.
Nice research and thoughts. It was a great break to immerse in your writing in my busy day :)