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How Diet May Have Changed the Way Humans Speak (go.com)
"Ancient hunter-gathererers often had front teeth that met together, unlike today's more common alignment where the upper front teeth 'overbite' the lower front teeth," writes Slashdot reader omfglearntoplay. "This malocclusion is a result of changes to the ancestral human diet and introduction of soft foods, according to a new study published in the journal Science." ABC News reports: More than 2,000 different sounds exist across the roughly 7,000 to 8,000 languages that humans speak today, from ubiquitous cardinal vowels such as "a" and "i" to the rare click consonants found in southern Africa. Scientists had long thought this range of sounds was fixed in human biology since at least the emergence of our species about 300,000 years ago. However, in 1985, linguist Charles Hockett noted that labiodentals -- sounds produced by positioning the lower lip against the upper teeth, including "f" and "v" -- are overwhelmingly absent in languages whose speakers are hunter-gatherers. He suggested tough foods associated with such diets favored bites where teeth met edge on edge, and that people with such teeth would find it difficult to pronounce labiodentals, which are nowadays found in nearly half the world's languages.
To explore Hockett's idea further, researchers developed computer models of the human skull, teeth and jaw in overbite, overjet and edge-on-edge bite configurations. They next analyzed the amount of effort these configurations needed to pronounce certain labiodental sounds. The scientists found that overbites and overjets required 29 percent less muscular effort to produce labiodental sounds than edge-on-edge bites. In addition, overbites and overjets made it easier to accidentally mispronounce bilabial sounds such as "m," "w" or "p," which are made by placing the lips together, as labiodental ones. The researchers also discovered that hunter-gatherer societies only have about 27 percent the number of labiodentals found in agricultural societies.
"Moreover, when they focused on the Indo-European language family -- which stretches from Iceland to the eastern Indian state of Assam and has records stretching back more than 2,500 years on how sounds in some of its languages were pronounced -- they found the use of labiodentals increased steadily following the development of agriculture," the report says. "All in all, they estimated that labiodentals only had a 3 percent chance of existing in the Indo-European proto-language that emerged about 6,000 to 8,000 years ago but are now found in 76 percent of the family's languages."
To explore Hockett's idea further, researchers developed computer models of the human skull, teeth and jaw in overbite, overjet and edge-on-edge bite configurations. They next analyzed the amount of effort these configurations needed to pronounce certain labiodental sounds. The scientists found that overbites and overjets required 29 percent less muscular effort to produce labiodental sounds than edge-on-edge bites. In addition, overbites and overjets made it easier to accidentally mispronounce bilabial sounds such as "m," "w" or "p," which are made by placing the lips together, as labiodental ones. The researchers also discovered that hunter-gatherer societies only have about 27 percent the number of labiodentals found in agricultural societies.
"Moreover, when they focused on the Indo-European language family -- which stretches from Iceland to the eastern Indian state of Assam and has records stretching back more than 2,500 years on how sounds in some of its languages were pronounced -- they found the use of labiodentals increased steadily following the development of agriculture," the report says. "All in all, they estimated that labiodentals only had a 3 percent chance of existing in the Indo-European proto-language that emerged about 6,000 to 8,000 years ago but are now found in 76 percent of the family's languages."
Slashdot ate my non-English quotation mark start. The quote was supposed to be: "In the Trump Administration, Science Is Unwelcome. So Is Advice."
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
From: https://www.metamorphosisorthodontics.com/blog/what-is-overjet-and-how-can-it-be-fixed
What is ‘overjet’?
Overjet describes what happens when the top front teeth point outwards, or protrude, over the bottom teeth towards the lip. It is also known as ‘protrusion’. In the past it was common to call it ‘buck teeth’.
Protruded upper teeth are often due to having a lower jaw that’s underdeveloped in proportion to the upper jaw.
This condition can cause embarrassment and self-consciousness, and people with overjet often try to hide their teeth when they smile.
Ze same iz true wiz ze French!
Ebb words are for ebbheminate pruit eaters. I'm a carnibore, you insensitibe clod!
It's for morons.
And they're the only ones in the world, who make a U/G-like sound instead.
Trust me, you do not want to get in a fight over pronounciation, with a language as dumbed down as English. Especially not with a German.
Because English is what happens, if you take German, add centuries of *heavy* alcoholism (mostly gin), until it lose most of its compound term precision and articles, and then try to save it with snobbery, by pouring in heavy doses of French and Latin inkhorn terms until it's impossible to know what letters make what sounds.
Now go feel offended if you must. That feeling means I hit the core where you agree. ;)
German precision.
Wrong ABC link (something about colorado river) in the summary.
See: https://abcnews.go.com/Technol...
Slashdot ate my non-English quotation mark start. The quote was supposed to be: "In the Trump Administration, Science Is Unwelcome. So Is Advice."
I wonder if eating your non-English quotation mark made /. talk any different?
Comme pour moi, Dave Lister's Chicken Vindaloo a la Red Dwarf always made me talk funny.
--
Holly : Jean-Paul Sartre said hell was being locked forever in a room with your friends.
Lister : Holly, all his mates were French.
He suggested tough foods associated with such diets favored bites where teeth met edge on edge, and that people with such teeth would find it difficult to pronounce labiodentals, which are nowadays found in nearly half the world's languages.
It turns out that few people talk with firmly clenched teeth. As a person with front teeth very much aligned, I can state with certainty that labiodentals are no problem whatsoever. In fact, even with clenched teeth you can manage them by using the underlip on the joining teeth rows. And even when pushing forward the lower jaw (I cannot push the upper forward, but then most of the world populace is in that configuration) I can articulate labiodentals. What then suffers are the fricatives (I wonder how people with normal configuration manage them well, anyway: they seem to call for teeth on teeth).
The suggestion that tougher-food diets are better dealt with by edge-to-edge FRONT teeth (on which then a raft of speculation is floated) doesn't make sense?
The front teeth are for grabbing & portioning; that is, they hold food and then sever it for processing by other teeth. Therefore their primary task is to cut food (that they can; more durable foods are dealt with by the canines) not grind it.
The most efficient way of cutting cuttable things is SHEARING, meaning two adjacent cutting planes moving next to each other (Cf scissors)...ie the way our teeth are now. Pinch cutting ala wire-cutters is useful only with a fairly narrow range of substances above a certain thickness and rigidity.
In fact, the only teeth in mammals that are edge-edge are grinding molars, so unless he's suggesting that we had molars for front teeth, the whole theory collapses.
-Styopa
Slashdot ate my non-English quotation mark start. The quote was supposed to be: "In the Trump Administration, Science Is Unwelcome. So Is Advice."
Slashdot also dines on English typographic quotation marks, forcing you to use the same ASCII quotes that our hunter-gatherer forebears used in the nineteen hundreds. I suppose Jared Diamond would be proud.
RRK
^D
Just shut up
WTP?
Vegan diet gives them a condescending tone towards others.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
I have experience of all teeth positions.
In youth, I had a normal bite. Then, due to acromegaly, my mandible grew on, giving me an edge-on bite at some stage, and eventually mandibular prognathism. (Obviously, this took 10-15 years, so it was a VERY gradual process.)
I do not remember having to expend more effort to speak "f" sounds. I do remember struggling with "s" sounds and whistling.
A little over a year ago, I had orthognathic surgery to shorten the mandible to normal teeth position (this was preceded by orthodontics.) Again, I did not notice any change in "f" pronunciation, although my "s" now tends to easily become a whistle, which I have to guard against. (This was a very abrupt change.)
I have been a regular speaker in my community for quite some years, both before the operation and afterwards. I don't think my speech has been influenced that much, apart from the "s".
Baba Booey!
war4peace said
Dave Lister's Chicken Vindaloo a la Red Dwarf always made me talk funny.
I eat Vindaloo. Talk funny is not what happens to me...
If you want to hear how they spoke thousands of years ago LOL
Not *ONE* comment about Labiodentals? I'm disappointed in all of you.
E8B8B
... so many fast-food place employees sound like static, at least when they take your order through the drive through.
Not a fan of "scientists" that that work so hard to support a single hypothesis. With agriculture, there came to be a lot more to discuss. The idea that language might pick up a few more consonants that might have to be enunciated more clearly versus the trade off of longer words and phrases seems pretty intuitive. It is also likely that teeth would evolve with dietary changes or ideas of beauty as the number of immediately available partners increased in an agrarian society. Correlation of dental changes and languages changes is expected since they both could be related to a major social change. Asserting that one caused the other seems to be a classic case of inappropriate convolutional correlation.
n1gger barry never knew his bigamist father fucknuts
Phpeek for your phelph!
https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/1333580-jurassic-park
My incisors have always met precisely, and I've never struggled to pronounce f's or v's. Neither does saying them exhaust me.