How Language evolves.
What shapes dialects and languages?
Introduction. What shapes how we speak?
I will investigate this question as a common-sense scientist. How do aspects like local environments, laziness, fashion shape the way we speak? All these aspects are present in how we pronounce and choose wordings. Think about it. What influences dance around between people evolving the way we speak? What aspects play a role you can actually notice when you listen? You might start to listen very differently to people talking. Hear me out.
Listen to how you pronounce words in your language. What hidden tensions, yes simple muscle tensions, in the neck, torso, lips, shape the sound? You can almost distinguish the French and English faces in how they differently shape their mouth all the time (Look with the French for a proposed underlip for complaining and, of course, with the English look for the stiff-upper-lip). What anxieties or fashions are hidden within that tension? Is it about looking cool or not threatening? Sounding clever or sounding dangerous? Is it about being clear, or enjoying the art of the formulations? These tensions in the body, sound, emphasis, all arise from the world you live in. They even shape your face, as the muscles of your face mold to your use of language and to the social rules of your culture.
Language is a living thing. My grandmother had a very strange way of talking, that fully made sense when I heard early Dutch spoken movies. She talked like her society talked when she was young. I recently found in England, my Oxford posh style was outdated. The British moved on towards the modern style RP, as they call it. Thus by people copying other people’s way of talking, copying peoples way of talking, and adding to it, a language keeps on changing. Here are the things that determine what we copy most.
1. Culture. “I guess this is just a fad, isn’t it?”
Pronounce this in your best upper-class English: “Well, I must admit, it’s, well, kind of, quite a complicated thing, we, eh, that we are dealing with, here, isn’t it?” Now try it in the tone of other classes, like a street thug, or a musician. Somehow, for me at least, it doesn’t sound as fitting. Sentences, word choice, framing, articulation, and even the tension within the mouth influences how things come out, and what fits to say. The English upper class is full of self-restraint. The whole tension in the talking seems like working to prevent letting slip out a full-hearted, “Fuck, dammit, sod off!!” Quite different from a French poet loving the sound of his own drama.
So all tensions within an individual from a certain culture will shape the way you talk. How clear or unclear. Take the (bit cliché) difference between English self-restraint, and an American wanting to convince, especially on TV stating “This is important people!” in every syllable they utter. Being clear, or hiding real feelings and points of view, pronunciation, word choice, tensions in body and mouth, framing, brakes, speed, inside the mouth or very clear, emphasis, etc, all shape how a language sounds and develops.
And this is not even focussing on social class. What social class are you in? How does it impact your sound, tone, dialects, and word choice?
2. History. “Can or can’t you curse on tv?”
Culture is not the only thing. History plays a bigger role than many think. Both the Flemish Belgians and Dutch speak Dutch. But the cultures are more different than most realize. The Dutch have almost always been a free country. They even have been an empire, that surrounded by enemies had to fight with little means. Freedom means you dare to talk freely. But to stay free, surrounded by bigger countries, you better talk clear, direct, and don’t beat around the bush. Things must get done collaboratively or else we all drown. Hence the Dutch directness, which the Belgians experience as arrogance. Compare it to modern Israeli Hebrew and there are a lot of similarities, given that Israel also is a small state surrounded by threats (whatever you think of that politically).
The Belgians have throughout history been occupied a lot. Hundreds of years they knew they were a people, yet occupied/ruled over by the Romans, French, Spanish, Austrians, Germans, and, yes, the Dutch too. Being occupied means you bow your head and don’t speak out (too clearly). You also must sound not threatening. Hence, I presume, that’s where the Belgians sweet and gentle sound came from. They love to be pleasant, which the direct Dutch experience as beating around the bush. It’s never clear to the Dutch if the Flemish mean something like a ‘yes’ or ‘no’. Because (these formerly) occupied people won’t openly refuse, what they don’t want to do.
Equally in East Asia, there are so many ways to refuse that Westerners don’t get. Since there you don’t want the other to lose face, you never say directly ‘no’. You will give a non-committal ‘yes’. It is the listeners that must understand this as a polite refusal. Some languages also just ain’t made to sound dangerous in, like the gangsters in this scene, however murderous they might be in real life.
We can also find an interesting difference between Portuguese from Portugal and from Brazil. In this video, you hear people flirt in both languages, yet the Portuguese people sound more studied, more cultured. It feels like they have to perform more to certain standards. The ruling class, as we also saw in English culture, shapes a language to sound more rigid, you can’t let go of control that easily. The Brazilians have more feeling, and perhaps because of the heat (see environment) in their country speak more lazily and calmly. Perhaps their calm has a relation with the Belgium Flemish calm. How to avoid upsetting your Portuguese lords, while avoiding working too hard as their subjects? Keep your tone and pace very relaxed. Works better in the heat anyway.
How has the history of your country influenced your language? What language is not done on your tv? What gets the ‘bleeep’?
3. Laziness. “I di, kindda, sayit, didn’I?”
Me favrit un. Yes, rather than articulate clearly: “What is it, that you want?”, many people rather mumble something like, “Waddayewant?”. It’s shorter, and takes less effort in pronunciation and articulation. Works very well with people who know you. Thus laziness shapes dialects. Example. In parts of the North and East of the Netherlands people prefer to leave e’s away at the end of words. ‘Lopen’ (walking) becomes ‘lop’n’. In the south, they rather leave the last ‘n’ and ‘t’ out, and pronounce it more as ‘lope’ and turn ‘dat’ into ‘dà’. There “Waddayewant?” is even shortened to “Wah?” or “Wamoddeh?” Why make an effort when people also get you with way less effort?
It may take a few generations to go from “What do you want?” to “Wah?” But shortcut piled on shortcut shapes most dialects I think. Just listen to this Dutch Dialect. You won’t understand (I don’t either), but it must be surprising how this is a language for locals, while for outsiders sounds like repeating more or less the same sounds all the time.
What shortcuts and laziness helps you take your dialects more easily?
4. Fitting In. “(nasal) Howdieee, Ye’all, yeey’all fiiine?”
And speaking of dialect, when you want to fit in, what do you do? You do the same as others, at times exaggerating it a bit, especially if you are a pleaser. And many pleasers, pleasing pleasers can steer certain sounds into an over-the-top version of the national lingo on certain aspects. Hence the incredible nasal American spoken in some parts. Why? Because of fitting in, not because it’s beautiful. Thus dialects tend to steer away from the general standard language, where education and modern media tend to diminish the gaps and seek to settle a standardized use.
In your speaking, what do you exaggerate in your tone of voice? And to please whom with what intentions?
5. Sound “Ooooh darling, how wonderfulll!!!!”
Now, how to make clear that one Waddeyewant means irritation about a disturbance, and the other sweet-talking to a child? To make the difference clear sounds play a role. For this, there are universal solutions. One can sound more like talking to a baby for a calming effect, and harsher when you mean business. Yet there are also local solutions. Peaceful Redneck sounds very different from peaceful Chinese. Listen to how, when people speak with extreme unintelligible dialect, sounds become very important to give a sense of meaning. And I think local sound solutions help in a ‘chicken or egg’ way shape colors of the local lingo.
Some languages are very musical, like Swedish, or Chinese. The dialect from Tirol has some fame for its music as well. The Dutch are not known for it. But the tone and pronunciation of a word like ‘mooi’, can change its meaning significantly. ‘Mooi!!’ officially means beautiful, yet can also mean, depending on tone (and context): fun, great for you, good riddance, Am I being screwed?, sexy, very sexy, stunning, okay let’s move on, agreed!, and more.
What words can you change the meaning of, by making them sound differently?
6. Environment. “Don’t whisper in traffic!”
An American friend of mine always hated Dutch. She found the language coarse and rough. She wondered about the reason for that. Then, one day, as she walks in a harbor in Amsterdam, she hears Dutch people talk to each other across the water. Suddenly the language makes sense. It carries across water. The local environment does shape language. If you ever heard Pygmies; they sing like forest birds. Their style will carry far, quite birdlike, through dense forest. A low Mongolian voice would be lost there. They seem made for wide spaces, where little happens, with long low sounds. And Norwegian? For me, it sounds like this traditional Norwegian song mixes the rough clarity of the Dutch across the water, the reaching across wide spaces of the Mongolians and through dense fir tree forests like a pygmy. ;)
Also the more separated a region, the stronger the dialect. The more people have been left alone, the more their local style will develop. It was only our modern enormous mobility and Radio and TV that unified the language to a dominant general overall. This too is the environment. Before that local villages might even have a hard time understanding the next village across the hill or mountain. And then weather plays a role too. Frequent cold winds demand a different way of speaking than very hot weather.
7. Gender Roles. “Hey, Dude, looking for trouble?”
I actually got the idea for this text, when listening to two boys on the street. They talked Dutch immigrant tough guys. Harsh Dutch mixed with Arabic gives a tough feel, that’s even copied by fully white boys who want to sound cool. Male Samurai sounds very different, but it also has the male cool and danger. Male and female contrast can be huge in some languages, like Japanese or Indian languages. The man must sound like power, deep with a harsh “G”. Being scruffy also helps. Or just deep and majestic. Women often girlish and not threatening, hence they often have high-pitched voices. It makes them sound younger and thus more attractive, or not, as a too high pitch can be irritating as well. Lower too has a function: go low to be very sexy.
We can see gender, culture, attitude come together in the next aspect. How do you sound manly, female, sexy, innocent, straight, etc? How aware are you of your own music in tone to play a certain role?
8. Purpose. “My sexy tone, makes you want this.”
Suddenly this Redneck sounds like a mix of the cliché American selling a point, mixed with trying to sound easygoing. The piercing nasal is the selling part and there’s a flavor of holding back from getting involved, which is kind of a manly way of keeping out of things (Southern paranoia towards outsiders?), which may turn threatening if you press on.
Finally, listen to this guy tries selling a car in ten different languages/accents. While the selling tone stays the same, can you hear it, you also hear some cultures are way more smooth than others. You can feel also different traditions between the lines, level of politeness, level of lying, level of involved emotionality, etc.
Then language has more levels, and or limitations as well. This video will pose some new questions to ye. :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XxbaJn0hmrw
9. Cultural Authority.
Have you ever wonder wondered why posh English sounds civilized, and street lingo sounds almost barbaric?
Or should we wonder, how the powers that be, are accepted as the way things are? Yes, I think, hidden in how language is pronounced, or spoken, we can find core beliefs or authority. Watch any epic Chinese movie, and you hear people speak in heroic slogans that must be adhered to. Higher rules aren’t to be questioned the language itself seems to say.
American movies are all about danger from the outside (and sometimes inside) that must be fought. They are full of the tough language of strong men protecting normal weaker people. Thus after a dozen action movies, you’ll think, normal people are weak, and we must leave the power to the real men, read psychopaths who don’t flinch when they kill people.
English movies love to exaggerate class differences through language and pronunciation, thus, even when a movie questions class differences, class is imposed upon the viewer. Add to that the idiotic sense that the upper class sounds civilized and lower classes basically rough and uneducated. Perhaps it’s time to ask who the real barbarians are? Might it be the ones who sound most cultured? Yes, those posh upper classes that incited many wars, colonized the world and still hide money on the Cayman Islands to evade taxes.
I think it’s more than likely that the trained upper-class use of language is training in disconnection! One shouldn’t feel too much, especially any empathy when deciding other people's fate. Yet preferably spoken in such a way, that people think it makes sense and is civilized. And even better, they accept it so fully, they even copy your pronunciation to become more like you. Hence the next factor..
10. Fashion and Status. “Get of yerr high horse, man!”
People tend to mold to what’s dominant. Makes you better fit in. And if you want to climb up in rank, you better sound more like them. Thus the elite’s use of language may be copied if people want to be like them. Or people who want to be seen as clever speak like Academics, using lots of quotes and clever words. Many Dutch children at some points copied the Gooise ‘R’, the R as spoken by many on tv. It sounded more upper-class and rich. Yet, by many provincial people, it is also often considered too arrogant and up in the air. Thus quite a few will make an effort to not speak like that.
This copying of the pronunciation of higher ranks can get funny results. Why do so many Spanish people talk with a long soft lisped ssshhh? Legend has it the Spanish once had a king with a lisp, so everyone at court started to talk like him. This made the lisped pronunciation of the z and c (what they call theta, I think) classy and fashionable, and later the new normal.
But not sounding like a king can also be very cool. Arrogant bastards. Nowadays sounding gangsta, as we also saw above, can be regarded as very cool. And to make it stick, some words suddenly work better than others. Compare (by saying out loud) Rock, Stick, Creep, Cuck, Cat with words like Feather, Wind, Show, While, Main. Makes you understand why ‘Fuck’ became a number one curse, and ‘Gnome’ is never used that way. Thus pronunciation that fits fashion, purpose, laziness, etc also influences our choice of words. If you don’t believe me, try whispering in your love interest's ear: “Can I break Rick’s cart, kick it and crunch caky checks.” with the same sexiness as, “I’ll flow on Gaia’s glide, to nudge and chew yellow waves.”
And then there’s youth language. Youth wants to stand out, so they invent their own words and style.
11. Modern media. “Suh, C WOW’s unsick DNC, LOL!”
Think emoji. Or watch the youth words video again. You’ll find many very short words. Why. Typo! Be woke. Texting needs to be easy and fast. That’s also because it’s annoying to type much with one thumb.
So this aspect might also be called, new dominant technology or conditions that change our environment. Thus even what once was the jargon of a few, may become general. “Tweet me these nerds who twitch their MMORPG online.”
Hence we also see the comeback of visual language. Modern media offers way more possibilities to see many things in a few pictures. #like
12. Foreigners. “My algebra educator hates curry!”
Ah, yes, never a good conquest without picking up some local lingo, and or leave a bit behind. Modern Indian is riddled with English words and expressions. Also, immigrants, refugees, or even traders bring new words to a country. English itself is an incredible synthesis of different languages. Latin, French, Saxon German, Viking Danish, Gaelic, Dutch, Frysian, Arabic, Indian and more words or abbreviations can be found in modern English. In recent years the global stage has embraced, once local terms, such as Haka, Karma, Ubuntu, Bami, Yoga, Kung Fu, and many more.
13. Pay off. “Yes sir, right sir, happy to please, sir.”
So lingo is to get closer and push away, like dancing. You can align, self-identify with your own people, attract, and be relaxed in it. Use of language also can help distinct from others, push away even. It’s used to calm others, sell, put them down, make them feel inferior, or even superior. “Yes sir, right sir, happy to please, sir.” You can steer direction with tone and words. What you use most will be ingrained in your personality. And thus what you personally, or as a group put most emphasis on, will in time shape the language as a whole. Being in power, as with the English and Portuguese higher classes shaped more self-control. And lower classes and subjected peoples will dim their voice towards these classes. Yet among themselves they can be more relaxed and open with feelings (like London cockney), or develop a careless direct attitude, hating all the flittery extra the upper class is doing.
Thus
And who knows what other influences, big and small, determine how we speak, influence our tone and choice of words? I hope you’ll listen henceforth with different ears. And perhaps even better, try to influence it a bit. Here are some of the words I and some friends invented. These too may help to see new things.
I wrote this text as a common-sense science. You can try it as well. When you wonder about some things, make a small mind map of it (if you don’t know what that is, google it) and then fill in what you know, and or google aspects you wonder about. And while writing I came up with a few more. I bet I can find scientific researchers and or experts on all the aspects I brought in. We often overlook how much we already know, when we stop to think a bit about it. But then again, I may be quite wrong with some assumptions and a real scientist might bring nuances I hadn’t be aware of, thus far. So check before you sell.
(edit 2019) So here is such a real scientist with a very interesting more scientific video on language, which adds grammar as an essential aspect(didn’t think about it too much). It will confirm, add quite a few points, yet also missed a few, as I talk more about evolution within and the video focuses more on origins.
I hope you enjoyed it.
This is a similar article exploring Dutch directness, or do you call it blunt?
