Geography & Language
Exploring the geographical influences on how languages evolved and diversified
This flash essay is part of a collaborative, constrained-writing challenge undertaken by some members of the Bangalore Substack Writers Group. This month, each of us examined the concept of ‘LANGUAGE’. At the bottom of this snippet, you’ll find links to other essays by fellow writers.
Language is the road map of a culture. It tells you where its people come from and where they are going. ~ Rita Mae Brown
The way we look at the world today is defined by political boundaries, both national and international. Sometimes, we’ve carved up countries and states based on language. Yet the evolutionary history of languages has been determined as much by geographical elements.
Language geography studies how languages are distributed around the globe, traces the linkages between one language and another, and tries to understand the human interactions — migratory, economic, social, or political — that may explain the presence of a language in a particular region.
Linguistic drift, similar to genetic drift, occurs when languages are passed on, imperfectly replicated, and gradually transformed across generations or geographies. There’s also a fine line between when a mutated language is considered a dialect and when it evolves into something completely new, partly or wholly incomprehensible to the traditional speakers.
Geographical distance may determine how well you can understand the language of your neighbours. Yet topographical features, such as mountains, seas, forests or deserts, dictate how connected or isolated a language is from its closest relatives. Wide, open valleys or plains, like in sub-Saharan Africa, or the Eurasian steppes, are areas with high linguistic diversity — where many languages evolve, yet there are overlaps between speaker groups, due to social interactions or trade relations. Whereas, the Basque language, born in the lee of the Basque mountains, is not as well connected to Spanish or French, its neighbouring languages. The language, it is said, evolved in near-isolation, created by the mountain barrier.
Even altitude influences the way languages evolve. A 2013 study of 567 languages, across linguistic families, identified ejective consonants — sounds produced with emphatic bursts of air — in 92 of them; a majority of which were spoken in high-altitude places. At high altitudes with decreased air pressure, ejective consonants need less effort and result in lesser water vapour loss through exhalation.
Weather conditions have also played a role in how languages develop. You may have heard that the Inuit have more than 50 words for snow; desert languages are also said to have a more expansive vocabulary for sand and water sources. English has also borrowed terms for weather phenomena from places where they are most prevalent, tsunami from Japanese, monsoon from Arabic, typhoon from Chinese, tornado from Spanish, and avalanche from French. The list goes on.
The most significant influence on language has been that of human movement, such as waves of colonisation, and economic, social or political migrations. Creole and pidgin are often the result of colonisation, slavery or forced migration, whereas dialects may represent migrations, geographical or political isolation. Cities, as economic centres, host a rich diversity of languages, which will eventually succumb to the pressure to conform to a single, universally understood language. In contrast, in places with heavy out-migration, languages are fading and dying.
In the Internet Age, English (and the English alphabet) dominates and continues its piratical conquest over other languages. The internet has spawned its own unique, digital language of emojis or emoticons, truncated, informal abbreviations (coz, LOL, ASAP, FYI etc), and visual, image-based messages (GIFs, memes etc).
To think that digital languages follow the footsteps of lyrical literature, only to resemble the cryptic ancient hieroglyphs and runes, represents an interesting, ironic journey of human linguistics.
Here are the links to the other essays:
The Language of Murder by Gowri N Kishore | About Murder, She Wrote.
I have no words by Richa Vadini Singh, Here’s What I Think
The Language Beneath Words by Mihir Chate, Mihir's Substack
Loss of a language By Rakhi Anil, Rakhi’s Substack
Beyond Words and Dialects by Aarti Krishnakumar, Aarti’s Substack
Jal-Elephants, Thread-Navels, and Other Sanskrit Beasts by Rajat Gururaj, I came, I saw, I Floundered
In search of my lost mother tongue by Siddhesh Raut, Shana, Ded Shana
The language question by Rahul Singh, Mehfil
The Dance of Languages by Haridas Jayakumar, Harry
Poetic Silence - From Anand Bhavan to 3039 and back by Amit Charles, @acnotes
No Garam Aloo in Tamil Nadu by Ayush, Ayush's Substack
Lost in translation by Vikram, Vikram’s Substack
I’ve been thinking a lot about tongues, again. by Ameya, (Always) Ameya
What does this mean? by Nidhishree Venugopal, General in her Labyrinth
Of Language, Love and Longing: Politics, Mother Tongue and Loss by Aryan Kavan Gowda, Wonderings of a Wanderer
The Bengaluru Blend by Avinash Shenoy, Off the walls
An Ode to Languages, by Lavina G, The Nexus Terrain
Fascinating to learn how altitude and weather conditions influence language. Your writing makes complex ideas so accessible and enjoyable to explore.
I learned something new, went "Ohhh" in a couple of places, and was hooked all through. It takes real skill to do justice to such an information-dense topic in only 500 words. ヽ(°〇°)ﾉ