Babies are born with the ability to make every possible sound in the world, but they start to pick up language pretty early on, and very quickly lose the ability to make sounds they don’t hear very early in life. So people in Borneo don’t have different mouths, they’ve just developed different language skills.
That’s the International Phonetic Alphabet. It’s designed to be able to represent all the sounds of human speech so linguists can record them before they disappear.
Lmcdanl over 15 years ago
That’s my kind of game!
jmworacle over 15 years ago
Ah “liberalism” in it’s truest form.
runar over 15 years ago
They can always use IPA.
Keith Messamer over 15 years ago
The indigenous people of Borneo have different mouths?
ewennick over 15 years ago
Babies are born with the ability to make every possible sound in the world, but they start to pick up language pretty early on, and very quickly lose the ability to make sounds they don’t hear very early in life. So people in Borneo don’t have different mouths, they’ve just developed different language skills.
runar over 15 years ago
That’s the International Phonetic Alphabet. It’s designed to be able to represent all the sounds of human speech so linguists can record them before they disappear.