Get ready to trumpet! World Elephant Day falls on August 12th every year and to coincide with this special event, we’ve been examining the fascinating language of elephants. Read on for an exploration of elephant language, how to read the signs of elephant body language and vocalisations and how far these intelligent animals can understand human language. Continue reading
Scientists have discovered that baboons can produce five distinct vowel sounds, which are strikingly similar to our own human vowel sounds. This discovery suggests that language skills actually evolved tens of millions of years earlier than previously thought. It is now thought that our pre-human ancestors could have been using meaningful language over 25 million years ago. Continue reading
Sound, language and emotion have strong links. Over 130 years ago, Darwin suggested that speech and melody have the same ancestor. Now two academics have returned to the idea and are currently researching the connection between sound and emotion in relation to language.
It seems that the tone of someone’s voice can affect our emotions in the same way that other sounds in the natural world can, such as running water or barking dogs.
We can feel calm, anxious, excited or happy and can even have our perceptions altered by the tones we hear.
Read on to explore the connection between sounds and emotions as we think about what this means for language. Continue reading