Talk of the Town

sound reflects off leaves and trunks                              KW

If bird sounds evolve differently depending on habitat, why wouldn't human sounds, i.e., language, be similarly affected by things like topography and climate? Well, as it turns out, they probably are. A map of where languages are vowel-heavy vs. consonant-heavy shows a definite pattern. The theory developed by University of New Mexico linguist Ian Maddieson has it that consonants don't travel well in windy, hot, and/or foliage-dense areas, which is why most of the languages used by people who live in rain-forest areas, like Hawaii, for example, are heavy on vowels. Tecumseh Fitch, a linguist at the University of Vienna in Austria, notes that habitat is probably just one of the causes of the differences. Still, he notes, "English is quite a consonant-heavy language, and of course it didn't develop in a rain forest" (story, audio clips): http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2015/11/06/454853229/did-the-language-you-speak-evolve-because-of-the-heat