Ambient temperature has a significant influence on the loudness of speech, according to a group of scientists from Germany and China in an article published in the December issue of the journal PNAS Nexus.
In their joint study, the researchers used the universal loudness scale to evaluate 5,293 world languages ??and 3,886 local dialects. In this way, they discovered that the inhabitants of the Southern Hemisphere speak more sonorous languages ??than those of the Northern Hemisphere. According to the results obtained, the Austronesian and African languages ??show the highest sonority indices.
As they explain, the impact that climate has on the sonority of languages ??is related to the characteristics of cold air, which is denser than hot air, which propagates the sound differently. Secondly, cold air is characterized by low absolute humidity, which, in turn, makes it difficult to pronounce sounds.
However, the authors of the research conclude that the impact of climate on the sound of a specific language is only perceptible after several thousand years, since within the same linguistic family there is no significant difference depending on the climate in the language where its speakers are found. (Text and photo: RT News)
