Developing different languages with the same tools

             Upon reading Gussenhoven and Kenstowicz’s articles, I found myself considering the difference between my native language of English and the language I have been trying to learn, Chinese.

            Gussenhoven’s article offers insight into how the anatomical components of the body create sounds and speech.  I found it interesting that all humans have and use the same biological equipment to form speech, yet different cultures have utilized this equipment in vastly different ways.  For instance, tonal languages primarily in East Asia rely more heavily upon pitch manipulation to differentiate between words than romantic languages from Europe.  I found myself wondering if there was some environmental explanation that might explain why people in different regions came to use the components of their vocal tracts differently.  Languages developed of thousands of years and seem to evolve similarly to how animals physiologically evolve, and it seems plausible that minute differences in one’s surroundings could effect how best one could efficiently communicate information.  For example, could differences in diet lead to differences in how vocal muscles developed, and thus make it more convenient for some people to rely more heavily upon larynx to differentiate between sounds while others relied more heavily upon their tongues?  Could increased air humidity affect how precisely one could control their vocal folds?  I don’t think that environmental discrepancies would account entirely for discrepancies in language, but it is an interesting idea none-the-less.

            When reading Kenstowicz’s article, I found myself thinking about the difficulty and speed at which I can learn different languages.  When learning Chinese, I found that I had to focus more closely on how I formed sounds and pronounced words than I did when learning Spanish.  Kenstowicz talks about how native speakers of a language mistakenly believe that different phonetically sounds are pronounced this same.  When I learn how to speak Spanish, it seems that I have to pay less attention to phonetics because many of the same phonetically discrepancies I take for granted in English can also be taken for granted in Spanish.  However, this is not the case for Chinese.