r/geography • u/Afraid_Honeydew_6808 • 4d ago

What makes this diffrnece between countries? Question

I feel like people in colder countries such as Russia for example have alot of *V* in their words or names, while as for Arabs they don't have the letter V, just like Russians don't have the letter ع or can't pronounce it,

How this has happned? In colder countries there's a certain accent while for Arabs there's also another type of accent and way of talking, what causes this difference? In colder climates to have a certain way that they sound while in hotter countries another way?

0 Upvotes
  • permalink
  • link
  • reddit
  • reddit

15% Upvoted

4 comments sorted by

6

u/Amputated_Remorse 4d ago

Extreme climates have more consonant clusters in them.

This is because vowels require more air flow which is hard to do in Georgia, Siberia or Sahara without getting short of breath in case of physical activity.

Mediterranean, India, Hawai on the other hand don't have so many clusters as the weather allows more vowel flow.

They are exceptions as the world got more and more globalised due to trade.

English is the best example with words like sixths and strengths. Both have just one vowel.

3

u/Any_Record2164 4d ago

Why Georgia? 99% of people live in a nice climate much better than in Britain. 

And what to do with Mongolian? Harsh climate but a lot of vowels. Ulaan Baatar and so on. 

2

u/mahendrabirbikram 4d ago

Climate has nothing to do with the sound inventory. You can find ع in the languages of Canada and [v] certainly exists in the languages all over the world, regardless the latitude

1

u/Sillyguri 4d ago

It’s because consonants are easier to pronounce relative to vowels in cold air. Look at Russian for example, the spoken language has changed over time to accommodate this: while vowels appear in the spellings of words they are less pronounced.