Altitude May Influence Language Sounds

Altitude May Influence Language Sounds
海拔可能影响语言的音调

The human voice is capable of forming a plethora of incredibly different sounds. So many, in fact, that each individual language contains only a subset of potential sound units, or phonemes. What factors determine whether a phoneme enters common use, or is relegated to silence? It turns out, geography may play a role.
One phoneme that occurs in only about 20 percent of the world's languages is the ejective consonant, such as p' or k'. Caleb Everett, an anthropologist at the University of Miami, decided to map where this sound occurs. He took a sample of 567 languages spoken around the world, and compared the locations and altitudes of those that either contained or ignored ejective consonants.
人类的嗓音可以形成各种不同的难以置信的音调。事实上，许多是每种语言包含的仅仅一部分潜在的语音单元，或者音节。是什么因素决定了一种音节成为常用，而另一种不常用？结果表明，地理位置发挥着很大的影响。一种出现在世界20%的语言中的音节是吐音的，比如p或k。 Caleb Everett，迈阿密大学的人类学家，决定绘制这些声音出现频度的地图。他采集了世界上567种语言的样本，比较了他们的位置和海拔，以及他们包含的吐音。
Everett discovered that languages that included ejective consonants were generally spoken at a higher elevation than those that did not. His research is in the journal PLOS ONE. [Caleb Everett,Evidence for Direct Geographic Influences on Linguistic Sounds: The Case of Ejectives]
Everett suggests that the sounds are more popular at altitude because lower air pressure may make it easier to produce the burst of air that is a key characteristic of ejective consonants. Which is P-retty C-ool.
Everett发现包含吐音的语言通常在高海拔地区使用的更多。他的研究发表在the journal PLOS ONE. [Caleb Everett,Evidence for Direct Geographic Influences on Linguistic Sounds: The Case of Ejectives]
Everett推断这些声音在高海拔地区流行是因为低气压使得产生吐音更容易。Which is P-retty C-ool.