Does climate affect people's speech?

[raccoon]

I mean, seriously, does it? Have any linguistic studies been done about the subject?

[Lydia Leftcoast]

1. I'm not aware of any, and a language's characteristics depend more on

what languages are around it than on what the climate is. Features that cover a whole region are called "areal features" and are due to contact among speakers of different languages.

For example, putting definite articles ("the") on the end of the noun is an areal feature of the Balkan region, even though Romanian (Romance language) and Bulgarian (Slavic) are on different branches of the Indo-European family tree.

Tones are an areal feature of Southeast Asian countries that border on China, such as Vietnam, Burma, Laos, and Thailand, even though they are from three different language families.

For example, the South Pacific has some flowing, musical languages like Hawaiian, but it also has some that are full of consonants. The Arctic regions have consonant-rich Inuit and more flowing Finno-Ugric languages.

[Behind the Aegis]

2. I have never heard of any such thing, so I did a quick search.

The only "climate" I saw referred to things such a business, casual, and the like. I saw nothing relating to environmental climate. Out of curiosity, what brought you to pose such a question?

[raccoon]

3. Well, this might seem flaky but I'll go ahead. In the US people in colder

areas typically talk faster than people in warmer areas. So I wondered if there was a connection.

I'm sure I'm not the first to wonder this. :-)

[Behind the Aegis]

4. I don't think that sounds flaky at all.

Given that climate does affect many aspects of our being, I don't think it is all that odd to wonder about our speech. You are not the only one to wonder such a thing as I have seen a number of people claim what you asked as truth sans proof. I even found a few similar questions to yours while I was looking for any type of correlation.

[Jim__]

5. Interesting observation.

Cold does make us move faster, and heat makes us slow down. This appears to hold true in the speech patterns in the US. It would be interesting to know if it is generally true.