Month: August 2025

In 1972, Italian singer Adriano Celentano was fed up with the impact of American popular culture on Italian music. To make a point, he composed a song titled Prisencolinensinainciusol, whose lyrics are entirely composed of gibberish that, to Italian ears, sounded like American English. The song, in a genre combining funk, disco and a precursor of hip hop, was a massive hit in several European countries. Celentano claimed to have invented the rap genre with this song and stated that he had been inspired by the Biblical story of the Tower of Babel, among other things.

Thanks in large part to YouTube, Prisencolinensinainciusol  has had a long second life, with its video racking up millions of views, and TV and radio producers using it in their soundtracks.

Photo Source: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0147983/

There are only a few recorded instances in history of an individual member of a pre-literate society creating an original writing system from scratch. One is the example of Sequoyah, a Cherokee man impressed by the concept of rendering speech in written form, which he first encountered through contact with European settlers. Seeing that their ability to write gave white settlers an advantage over the Cherokee, Sequoyah decided to right this imbalance.

While many pre-literate societies become literate in their own language by adopting an existing writing system – for instance, the Roman alphabet – Sequoyah developed his own, which he finalised in 1821. 

Having toyed with pictographs at first, Sequoyah ultimately developed a symbol for each syllable in the Cherokee language. Using printed materials as a reference, including the Bible, he developed a syllabary of 85 symbols, many of them adapted from English, Greek and Hebrew letters – but representing completely different sounds.

Initially, Sequoyah’s work aroused suspicion and he was arrested by Cherokee authorities, but when they saw how he could use writing to communicate with his daughter, whom he had taught how to read, the Cherokee people became enthusiastic about the new writing system. Literacy spread rapidly among the Cherokee, with up to 100% of them literate by around 1846; a higher rate than among Europeans settling in North America in the same time period.

Sequoyah’s work would influence many others around the world. It is believed, for example, that when a literate Cherokee emigrated to Liberia, he inspired speakers of Bassa to develop their own syllabary, and several other West African cultures did likewise. 

Photo Source: https://www.native-languages.org/cherokee_alphabet.htm

Languages come into being and are disseminated in various ways. Obviously, the languages we speak, and how we speak them, are influenced by our family and cultural backgrounds, the education we receive, and the people we meet throughout our lives.

Some researchers also believe that language may be affected by climate. Linguistic anthropologist Caleb Everett points out that different sounds can be easier or harder to make depending on the climatic conditions. For example, some sounds are much harder to make if your vocal cords are very dry, which is more likely to be the case somewhere with a hot, arid climate. According to Everett’s research, languages that developed in places with very dry climates use fewer vowel sounds than languages that developed in places with high levels of humidity, and languages that come from places at high altitude use a higher number of ejective consonants, which are explosive sounds made when the vocal cords are closed.

Nowadays, human populations are extremely mobile, so cultural influences are likely to be more important than climate into the future. Nonetheless, this unusual, intriguing and emerging field of linguistic research opens up many avenues for future investigation, including the possibility that, over time, climate change may have a noticeable impact on how we talk.

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#Climate #ClimateChange #CulturalConnections #CalebEverett #ClimateConditions #DryClimates #Facts #DidYouKnow #Humidity #101Translations #LanguageExperts #Culture

Photo Source: https://wonderopolis.org/wonder/what-is-climate-change

Prior to the conquest and colonisation of North America, the areas now known as Canada, northern Mexico and the United States were home to a large number of indigenous cultures, each with its own language. Many of those languages were not closely related, and while many people spoke several of them, it was often necessary to communicate with individuals from very different linguistic backgrounds. 

To solve this language dilemma, these indigenous nations developed a form of signing, known as ‘Plains Indian Sign Language’, ‘Hand Talk’, and by several other names. Historically, it was used for international commerce and diplomatic relations, much as Latin was once used in Europe. It combined simple gestures – such as pointing upwards for ‘up’ – with complex hand-movements denoting abstract concepts. It also existed in a written form comprising petroglyphs, pictographs and hieroglyphs that marked territory and provided information about local water sources and other crucial information. 

Today, Plains Indian Sign Language is – like many North American languages – endangered, but a recent resurgence in interest signals that it may still have a future.

Photo Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plains_Indian_Sign_Language