Call me doubtful. If labiodentals are the result of softer, easier-to-eat foods, then you would suspect that cultures where chopsticks are used (smaller bites, easier-to-eat) would have more of these sounds than those which only "recently" gave up on their nomadic ways and stopped slicing meat off of bones with knives. The reverse seems to be true, however. European languages tend to have both the voiceless and voiced versions of these sounds, while East Asian languages only one or – in the case of Japanese and Korean – none at all.
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Look at that picture! Before sugary, processed foods, humans retained their teeth.
https://emcphd.wordpress.com
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Love this! BBC.com has an article about the rhotic (the “r” sound) the other day, which is sort of related:
http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20190315-what-a-single-sound-says-about-you
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In Spanish, there is no labiodental "v." Instead, There is a bilabial fricative.
When Spanish was developing from Latin, some of the "f" sounds became "h" and then later became silent. Latin "facere," meaning "to do," or "to make," became "hacer." The "f" sound survived before the modern diphthong "ue," as in "fuego," meaning "fire."
Cooked food exists in the cultures of Spanish-speaking peoples.
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It strikes me that very little evolution is required for the dental changes necessitated by labio-dental sounds. My daughter was unable to pronounce the k sound until she stopped using a sippy-cup. The point being that our skulls, jaws and dentition are malleable during the early years of life.
Also, fewer body systems are under greater evolutionary pressure than those required to ingest food. Inability to do so would put the individual at an evolutionary disadvantage fairly quickly. The recently developed science of epigenetics teaches us that gene expression can change within a single generation.
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I question two points in JoAnna Klein's article "Dietary Changes....". First, in the geographical area where humans "settled down" to cultivate an agrarian society, it is unlikely that they kept cows. It is much more likely that they kept goats since we are talking about Mesopotania - today, parts of Iraq, Iran, Syria and Turkey. Eventually , in that area, great and powerful civilizations rose and fell, such as the Sumerians, Assyrians, Akkadians and the Babylonians. This took place over many thousands of years.
How do we know that the 'f' and 'v' sounds weren't used in their languages? There are no recordings, only the written languages on clay tablets and on parchment. JoAnna Klein should have worked harder and given us some data from the Dr Bickel's research to show this (if she were a serious science writer).
Instead, her article is sort of 'pop science'. Even her title has the collegiate wink-wink, snickering "the F-word". Does it occur to her that 70 - 90 year-olds may be interested and want to read the Science column to add new information to their years of accumulated knowledge.
Please, Editors, give us writers who are as serious and curious as your Readers.
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@Ruth Tuft ...while also, within limited space and budget, giving a hand up to those who haven't had your long decades contemplating history and anthropology. This is a daily newspaper. There are plenty of other resources for delving deeper into any issue you'd care to name.
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The Spanish use of the Z in places where an S appears is due to one of their Kings having a harelip. The king would pronounce S as Z, so the obedient populace also began doing the same, as not to embarrass their King. In the Americas Spanish (Castilian) speakers do not make the Z sound for S because they are speaking the language as it was spoken 500 + years ago. I think these is another example of influences on spoken language.
This is completely false. It has always been a non-credible fable and it’s ridiculous that people still repeat it to this day. Most broadly speaking, the Spanish interdental “th” sound is a direct descendent of the Vulgar Latin “ts” and “dz” sounds, while the Spanish alveolar/dental “s” sound is a direct descendent of the Vulgar Latin “s” and “z” sounds. (There is a lot of additional complication to this but these are the broad strokes.) In Andalusia/Seville Spanish, “th” and “s” also existed at an earlier point but eventually merged into “s”, and that variety of Spanish with the merged consonants spread to the New World, since most of the settlers of the Spanish Americas came from the south of Spain. In Central/Madrid Spanish, those two sounds never merged and remain distinct to this day. The takeaway from this in relation to the article is that cranial structures have no relevance to the modern history of Spanish. The entire history of these sound changes is extremely well documented, so people should stop spreading this falsehood.
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@Jorge Please educate yourself before you start passing
myths as scientific facts. There is enough misinformation and lack of knowledge in the N.Y. Times about Spain, its history and its peoples. Just a little common sense and a dash of critical thinking will make you realize the fallacy you’re perpetuating.
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