Mind your language
COMPILED BY ROHINI RAMAKRISHNAN
Blame the genes: Difficulty in learning a new language?
If you get tongue-tied when trying to learn a new language, your genes may be to blame, suggests a new study. While there is no gene yet found that is responsible for pre-programming a person with a given language, there does appear to be a link between types of two genes and the languages people speak. The new findings could be the first sign of a subtle effect in which people’s DNA could bias them toward learning a particular set of languages. Robert Ladd and Dan D
ediu at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland noticed the possible link while studying the genes dubbed Microcephalin and ASPM. These genes play a role in brain development and appear to still be evolving in humans (get an overview of human genetics). In tonal languages, the same word can have widely different meanings depending on the inflection of the speaker. The researchers scoured records of genes from societies around the world and compared their findings with the languages those groups speak. While they didn’t prove there’s a direct link, they did reveal a strong connection between the versions of the two genes that people had and whether their native language was tonal or nontonal.
Printer friendly
page
Send this article to Friends by
E-Mail
Young World
