Ear infections cause Australian languages

[jal]

(Also, it's not that fricatives become inaudible without the higher frequencies, but that they become indistinguishable from one another. Phones tend to cut off higher frequencies; try to get a friend to correctly distinguish /f s S/ in isolation over the phone.)

I beg to differ. I suffer from profound hearing loss, hearing nothing over about 1500Hz. This means that I really can't hear conventional s-es, no matter how hard you pronounce them. Sure, they may produce some residue, so I can hear you're saying *something*, but actually perceiving them as a speech sound is difficult if not impossible. I also cannot reliably tell the difference between k, p, t, s, f, x (so basically all voiceless plosives and fricatives), and the difference between rounded and unrounded vowels. Recently (my hearing loss is progressive) I noticed confusing nasals and liquids, as well. This is fun when someone says a word or a name in isolation.


JAL

[Hallow XIII]

note the fact that "profound hearing loss"

[jal]

note the fact that "profound hearing loss"

Yes, I was not comparing my situation to that of Australian aboriginals. But fiauwle said "it's not that fricatives become inaudible without the higher frequencies", and that's just not true, I know sadly from personal experience.


JAL

[sirdanilot]

Very Sorry ro hear about your hearing loss jal, it seems particularly awful that it is progressive. No pun intended by the way

In any case I certainly believe that physiology can affect language , you see it in individual cases all the time (toothless people or elderly people who lose the ability to clearly articulate ejective consonants for example as someone who researched an Andean language experienced ). I experienced if myself when analyzing Dutch dialects. Some recordings were done by elder people with false teeth and its hard to properly annotate these recordings because sounds of the false teeth interfere with speech .

If such physiological things are suffered from by a substantial percentage of the population over a substantial amount of time it can certainly cause a language to change . I cannot judge whether this is so in this case.

[sirdanilot]

I must note though that people are very good at filling in the gaps caused by hearing loss bu t if this persist s over generations then language. Is bound to change...