This post was very interesting and it made me think of money (for whatever reason). Money is defined as a common medium of exchange. Mises and Hoppe have stated that, in the long run, a free market will elect one money as all other monies are eventually dropped through the market process. I was wondering- does the same thinking apply for language? I mean this: in a condition of free market (absence of nation-states), will there eventually be only one language which we all will use to communicate?
If I had a cake and ate it, it can be concluded that I do not have it anymore. HHH
Yes, this is one of the things I was wondering about in my thread. Will people end up speaking something like the "street speak" from Blade Runner (A kind of unversal language cobbled together from all the others)? Or will we tend to seperate ourselves into pockets of different languages, similar to the way New York City is heading?
This is yet another thread that forums like this were made for. This is a really intriguing question. I'm not really sure there's a good way to tell. Language is such a divider in itself...it is what helps keep people and cultures separated and defined. It would be interesting to see what would happen. I would guess that given enough time, people probably would end up with one language.
The world is so physically large though, we would have to be talking about an incredibly free world society...there would also have to be much less restrictions on movement...both institutionally and economically. People would have to be much free-er to get around and interact...without the hassle and restrictions of government travel and immigration agencies. And travel costs would have to drop dramatically (which of course a completely free society would have no problem accomplishing in a relatively short amount of time.) It would definitely take some time, but it would make sense that the language would go the way of money...for essentially the same reasons.
John James:[W]e would have to be talking about an incredibly free world society...there would also have to be much less restrictions on movement...both institutionally and economically. People would have to be much free-er to get around and interact...without the hassle and restrictions of government travel and immigration agencies.
Of course, the abolishment of government would be a start for these conditions to be met, but I see your point and agree. Chinese and english have become very widespread languages despite the existence of states which maintain their language(s) through legislation (the language(s) in which the legislation is written and, the content of language being subject to speech regulations); I think english at least is spoken virtually everywhere, no (through historical imperialism as well as the growth of exchange in english speaking countries- Great Britain and the US, for example, being the economic leaders of the world at various points in history)? I'd imagine that language would spread as commerce does, the reason for this being that a universal language would faciliate exchange, and that a free market (including the nonexistence of nation-states) would eliminate most obstacles to the establishment of a universal language. Plus, the growth of something like the internet and other means of communication that may come in the future would also hasten this process of weeding out "less marketable" languages. I'd imagine that, given enough time, there would be a universal language.
fountainhead:Yes, this is one of the things I was wondering about in my thread. Will people end up speaking something like the "street speak" from Blade Runner (A kind of unversal language cobbled together from all the others)? Or will we tend to seperate ourselves into pockets of different languages, similar to the way New York City is heading?
I'm thinking that language is tied to exchange, economic or otherwise, and that language will spread as commerce does. If, for whatever reason, people become more isolated from others because they perceive it in their best interest to not trade with others then this group will implicitly construct an obstacle for integrating languages with this other society with which they refuse to trade.
As for the language chosen, this is ultimately irrelevant. English has done pretty well, I think, historically and that its spread is most likely due to the history of English-speaking countries such as the UK and the US. In the absence of states, I'd imagine that a universal language would emerge. I opt for pig-Latin.
ThatOldGuy:I think english at least is spoken virtually everywhere, no (through historical imperialism as well as the growth of exchange in english speaking countries- Great Britain and the US, for example, being the economic leaders of the world at various points in history)?
Yeah, if you want to keep up, you pretty much have to know English. It's nothing about the language itself that is special, it's just that it's the language all the work takes place in (i.e. anything that's cutting edge). One might make the argument for Japanese in this area, but I don't if they would be where they are if so many of them didn't speak English. Duke offered an incredibly poignant personal observation that I think helps explain/support my case.
I'd imagine that language would spread as commerce does, the reason for this being that a universal language would faciliate exchange, and that a free market (including the nonexistence of nation-states) would eliminate most obstacles to the establishment of a universal language. Plus, the growth of something like the internet and other means of communication that may come in the future would also hasten this process of weeding out "less marketable" languages.
Bingo. That's why I said it would disappear the way moneys do, for essentially the same reasons.
I'd imagine that, given enough time, there would be a universal language.
Did you really echo what I said, or was this just accidently left out of quote brackets?
mises.org/daily/5846/Why-Do-Languages-Die
interesting article related to the topic
I can see a universal language of exchange appearing. I don't think, however, that all other languages will disappear. I think many would preserve tongues for cultural/religuous purposes ie Catholics using latin for mass, Trekkies and Klingon :)
John James: I'd imagine that, given enough time, there would be a universal language. Did you really echo what I said, or was this just accidently left out of quote brackets?
BransonBow:mises.org/daily/5846/Why-Do-Languages-Die interesting article related to the topic
Should have known. There's always a Mises Daily.
Or two, or three...(not all Dailies here, but still...)
Evidently this has been asked before, and Danny Hieber is quite interested in the subject...
Language and the Socialist-Calculation Problem
Language & Value Theory
A World Language
Are Markets like Language? (PDF)
JJ you are correct this is a good thread, it has my mind wizzing. It's like Danny has took a page from my brain.
Someone once told me that both ebonics and Chinese characters were an inferior language. What bothered me the most was this person is a Libertarian. It struck me instantly that he was wrong. Just as Danny pointed out, the optimal number of languages a person needs is based on their environment, the same with what language to speak. How superior is the english alphabet in the middle of rural china? Not very, so in this instance what language is "better" to speak? It's the same with ebonics/slang. Personally, in proffessional settings I use "proper" english, around my friends i use "ebonics". For example, a greeting at work would go like "How are you doing today?" and I'd shake there hand. When I see someone on the street I'm like "Man, this fool right here!" and then i'd give them some dap. What is the correct greeting? The one which effectively communicates with the other party.
BransonBow:Someone once told me that both ebonics and Chinese characters were an inferior language. What bothered me the most was this person is a Libertarian.
It's possible he was simply talking about the logic and structure and limitations behind the communications...not necessarily a value judgement in terms of what is most "useful". As in, in a phonetic language like English, you have a small, very limited set of characters that each have a designated sound, and then further rules for when those sounds change (slightly). With this structure you can create an infinite amount of combinations, thus creating new words that can easily be written and read (and heard and then written) with relative ease.
In a character language like Chinese, you can't really do this. If I recall correctly, to be considered literate you have to be familiar with around 2000 individual characters. And this means random (non-defined) "words" cannot easily be created and adopted within the language. This is why Chinese names all have a "meaning"...they're basically just words (or more specifically, concepts or ideas). Otherwise, no one would know how to say the name that is written (i.e. it would just be a random symbol). In English, people make up names all the time...and no one has any trouble pronouncing them (within reason) because the symbols that make up the name have defined sounds. So if you see the name "LaFawnduh"...that's not a common name with some kind of etymological background that could be traced back to a "meaning" (like "John" for example is believed to come from various languages and incarnations of "Jehovah has favored").
Chinese names are kind of similar to traditional European names in that they all have "meanings"...however in Chinese they are much more commonly known (i.e. it's easy to translate what a Chinese name means, but if you ask any English speaker what their name "means" they couldn't tell you. It's just a name.)
So one advantage a phonetic language with a small alphabet has over a character language is the ability to create new words and have them easily written and read.
Another advantage is in the written world, writing a lanuage like English tends to be more efficient than Chinese. For example, remember how you need a 2000 character vocabulary to be literate. Did you ever think of how someone operates a computer in Chinese? Obviously a 2000 key keyboard is impractical (plus, that's just "literate"...what if you want to go beyond that?). Therefore multiple methods for Chinese keyboard input have been invented, virtually all of which are more complex or complicated than what is required for a language like English.
Yet another issue with Chinese is the requirement of tonality to convey meaning. There are many terms (i.e. words, i.e. sounds you make with your vocal chords) that change meaning completely based on the tone used. This limits (or at least complicates) communication. For example, a person who has some type of disorder that prevents or makes it hard for them to change tone. Or someone who cannot speak at all without the aid of a mechanical larynx, like many former smokers, or suffers or ALS who require a computerized device like Stephan Hawking. Additional accomodations would need to be made for them to speak Chinese as effectively and freely as they speak English.
I think these are the kinds of issues the person probably had in mind when concluding that Chinese was "inferior" as a language. Again, not that it's less useful in today's world, just that if you had no language at all, and were to just pick one to be implemented or developed, something like English would appear to be the superior choice.
There will never be a single language exclusively spoken by all people (unless there is a mass global extinction and there are just a few humans left).
Note that the process by which a commodity becomes money is only eliminative of other commodities in their potential use as money. People still demand dried tobacco, salt and fur even after those commodities have been "eliminated" from the competition to be money.
The analogue of the role of money in language is not communication but translation. The genius of money is that you no longer need to know the price of every good in terms of every other good in order to compare the prices of any two goods. You simply convert each to its money price and compare the money price. If the price of an apple is $1 and the price of an orange is $2, then the apple price of oranges is 2 apples per orange.
In a world with many local languages and a universal, global language, most people would need to know just two languages in order to be able to communicate with anyone in the world. That is a huge savings compared to the present state of affairs where you would need to know all living languages in order to communicate with anyone in the world. A slightly more accurate way to say it is in terms of the number of kinds of translators you would need - in the present system you need N x N translators where N is the number of living languages - this is an astronomically large number. But in a world where there is one truly global language and N natural languages, you only need N kinds of translators, that is, people from each natural language who can also speak the global language.
The problem with getting a universal language from one of the existing languages goes to the imperial nature of languages mentioned in this article.
Mises explored relations between language and nationality. Why does a person identify himself (if he does) with a particular nationality? What is the essence of nationality? Not where a peson lives, Mises said, not citizenship, not a shared history, and not a race or ancestry. The nation is a speech community. "Community of language binds and difference of language separates persons and peoples." ... Mises did not want actually to impose a close match of political with linguistic boundaries, but he recognized advantages of a common native language within a political unit. No group then has a language advantage in political dialogue, and no group feels condemned to perpetual minority status because of language.
...
Mises did not want actually to impose a close match of political with linguistic boundaries, but he recognized advantages of a common native language within a political unit. No group then has a language advantage in political dialogue, and no group feels condemned to perpetual minority status because of language.
If Latin were the international language, Europe would have a position of preeminence throughout the world. If English were the (truly) international language, England and the US would have a position of preeminence throughout the world. The same goes for Hindi or Japanese or Chinese or Hebrew or whatever. The point is that no living or even ancestral language is suitable for use as an international language because it confers unfair benefits on those who have that language as their heritage and everyone except the native speakers are - naturally - going to balk and drag their feet at the prospect of having to compete on an unfair playing field.
As bizarre as it sounds, I think a completely devised language is the only thing suitable for an international language. I have devised a language with rules for syntax and word-formation (though no vocabulary as yet), I call it Pahana. The idea is that this language should be machine-processable (nothing to do with AI, it just has to do with imposing a strict regularity of word usage). This language would not be suitable for translating Shakespeare into Chinese because it would be a fairly impersonal and "idiom-free" language.
What it would be useful for is translating something like "Please send 10 boxes of Aspirin to 120 Main Street" from Swahili to Telugu. I don't think you can ever automate the natural-language -> global language conversion but I think you could automate (with software) the global-language -> natural-language conversion. This would have some benefits for cutting the translatory effort from N to one. In this case, a translation has to be performed just once in order for the contents of a message to be readable in all languages. Once converted from natural-language to the global-language, it's just a mouse-click to convert that global-language message into any particular natural language.
No, I don't believe that BabelFish or AI-translation are going to solve this problem.
Clayton -
The parallels between language and money are indeed very strong. I. Ryan put it nicely in that other thread: "Languages, like monies, are mediums of exchange. Monies are mediums of exchange of goods and languages are mediums of exchange of ideas, concepts, or whatever." Recent history suggests we are moving towards an international language (English) and the internet (by facilitatating exchange of ideas, globally, like nothing before it) has surely accelerated this trend.
However, I want to make a counterargument, or at least an argument why the trend might slow down or even stop. Automatic translators. As I understand it, great strides have made in this area recently and more are expected. I recall Jeffrey Tucker talking about the first event (monumentous in terms of the human journey) of two people who don't speak the same language having a real-time conversation, and understanding each other, with the aid of this technology. If this technology continues to improve, the current incentive for non-English speakers to learn English diminshes.
One can imagine an internet where every page is auto-translated, so every page is readable to everyone, regardless of the language it was written in. And any verbal communication could also be translated in real time, so it begins to make very little difference what language the parties are actually speaking. It could even be taken offline with mobile technology like a real Babelfish, so you could even go to a foreign-speaking country and speak your own language and be perfectly understood.
This would effectively reduce the costs of "language barter" to almost zero, or to such an extent that the costs of learning a second language outweigh the benefits for most people.
Government Explained 2: The Special Piece of Paper
Law without Government
Clayton:Note that the process by which a commodity becomes money is only eliminative of other commodities in their potential use as money. People still demand dried tobacco, salt and fur even after those commodities have been "eliminated" from the competition to be money.
This is true, but doesn't necessarily pose an impossibility for the formation of a universal language. As BransonBow has noted above, there may be alternative uses for languages that are no longer popularly spoken such as Latin for religious worship by Catholics, Arabic for worship by Muslims and Hebrew for worship by Jews. It could be that these languages are demanded for religious observance just as those goods you cite above are demanded for reasons other than exchange.
In this sense, the languages would be confined to a particular use (a service, in an economic sense). However, this may not stop these languages from being used as means of communication amongst those who have the same faith. There currently are countries where the overwhelming majority of people are of one religion and communicate in that religions' language (Saudi Arabia, Israel, etc.) as well as others. But what if there were no countries (nation-states)?
The presence of religion would pose a hindrance to the formation of a universal language, but it wouldn't necessarily prevent its formation entirely. Of course, people abandoning religion would consequently lead to an abandonement of the language for the faith in question and make the language in question less marketable.
Clayton:The analogue of the role of money in language is not communication but translation.
That is an important distinction to make, but translation does fall under communication.
There are different focuses in the category of communication: Which language sounds nicest? Which language gets the point across quickly? Which language is the easiest to learn? Which language is the easiest to speak? Which language is the most articulate?
Of course, the considerations amongst language-market actors would vary, but translation wouldn't be the only consideration for which one accounts in communication.
Clayton:The problem with getting a universal language from one of the existing languages goes to the imperial nature of languages mentioned in this article.
A counter to this point, though, would be network effects Yeager mentions in that article:
The concept of network effects, which I mentioned earlier, makes us wonder, though, how such a language could ever catch on. What reason would anyone have to learn it before a great many other people were already using it? Who would have any reason to go first?
At this point, there's an interesting impasse: in order for a universal language to occur would it have to be constructed for such purpose of not offending (linguistic and cultural) minorities? Or will this constructed language fail to gain attraction by others as a potential universal language due to the absence of others who already speak it?
Clayton:Mises did not want actually to impose a close match of political with linguistic boundaries, but he recognized advantages of a common native language within a political unit. No group then has a language advantage in political dialogue, and no group feels condemned to perpetual minority status because of language.
As it pertains to Mises' critique of the possibility of a universal language, it would be interesting to see what effects the absence of nation-states would have on the establishment of a universal language. Mises seems to note that linguistic boundaries are closely tied to political boundaries. If there were no political boundaries by which anyone would be bound, the flows of communications through language would be dynamic and the distinguishment between minorities and majorities would be blurred if not eliminated. For this reason, it seems, Mises' point falls in signicance once political boundaries are abandoned as I specified in the OP.
Clayton:If Latin were the international language, Europe would have a position of preeminence throughout the world. If English were the (truly) international language, England and the US would have a position of preeminence throughout the world. The same goes for Hindi or Japanese or Chinese or Hebrew or whatever. The point is that no living or even ancestral language is suitable for use as an international language because it confers unfair benefits on those who have that language as their heritage and everyone except the native speakers are - naturally - going to balk and drag their feet at the prospect of having to compete on an unfair playing field.
This makes sense, but wouldn't this be tied to the nationalism felt, to whatever degree, because of the existence of nation-states? Of course, while political units exist and have hindered the unification of languages, as that article mentions, its difficult to ignore the success that English (for example) has had as an increasingly universal language; to a large extent, this is likely due to the history of English speaking countries (imperialism) as well as economic growth (the US and UK being economic world leaders at various points in history in terms of wealth).
Clayton:I have devised a language with rules for syntax and word-formation (though no vocabulary as yet), I call it Pahana.
You didn't need to do that to contribute to this thread.
Out of curiosity, why do you call it Pahana?
Thanks for the contribution, Clayton. It's interesting to hear from someone with a perspective opposite to those who have, so far, responded to this thread.
Graham Wright:However, I want to make a counterargument, or at least an argument why the trend might slow down or even stop. Automatic translators. As I understand it, great strides have made in this area recently and more are expected. I recall Jeffrey Tucker talking about the first event (monumentous in terms of the human journey) of two people who don't speak the same language having a real-time conversation, and understanding each other, with the aid of this technology. If this technology continues to improve, the current incentive for non-English speakers to learn English diminshes.
I love that book by Tucker and recall that passage! If I could write a book about Capitalism, it would be It's a Jetsons World.
This is a good point to make, but wouldn't this be akin to stating that it's unlikely that a universal medium of exchange (money) would occur because of the presence of exchange ratios for existing currencies? While this does facilitate exchange as it is, my OP asks about what would happen if the world were substantially different from what it is today (considering it from a point in time in which there are no nation-states and there is a free market).
Graham Wright:This would effectively reduce the costs of "language barter" to almost zero, or to such an extent that the costs of learning a second language outweigh the benefits for most people.
Interestingly, this thread is making me question what I think I know about money.
Out of curiousity, why do you call it Pahana?
It's kind of expositive of the structure of words in the language. There are six consonants (p,m,k,h,t,n) and four vowels in the language (a,e,i,o pronounced ah,eh,ee,oh as in Spanish). The six consonants can be divided into three pairs of hard and soft: p,m (hard/soft labial), k, h (hard/soft glottal), t, n (hard/soft dental). Letters cannot be arranged in just any way, they must be formed into the 24 syllables that you get from each combination of consonant and vowel, pa, pe, pi, po, ma, me, mi, mo, etc. Each word must begin within one of the hard consonants (p,k,t) and each successive syllable in the word must begin with one of the soft consonants (m,h,n). Since p is the "first" consonant in the language and a is the first vowel, I decided the name of the language should begin with the syllable pa. And since h and n are the soft consonants belonging to the other pairs of consonants, I decided the successive syllables should begin with the consonants h and n. I tried a lot of combinations of vowels and they all sounded too weird to me except Pahana.
I chose the hard syllables to begin words because they have a "sharper" or more distinctive sound in speech - they stand out more. And by setting aside one group of consonants to begin words, the text becomes "machine processable" in a nice way. Consider some gibberish conforming to the word-formation rules I've given:
Teme kani ki komime pa ke to pi ta po tamano
Even if the words are jammed together, you can still tell where the words should be:
Temekanikikomimepaketopitapotamano
This is important because when people speak, they speak more like the second string than the first.
If you're wondering why I eliminated so many consonants and vowels, here's some of my reasoning. I chose the consonants and vowels I did on the basis of thinking about sounds that are blurred across different languages. For example, East Indians tend to say the letter 't' more like 'th' (and when we try to speak their languages, we tend to wrongly convert all their 'th's into t's). The t is sharper and shorter in duration. But both really are dental consonants. So, I thought I'll simplify the dentals down to two extremes: t and n (unvoiced). You can think of it as a scale t - d - n. T is anything on the "shorter" side of d and n is anything on the longer side of d. That gives plenty of room for differences in pronunciation based on a person's mother tongue.
Then that got me thinking of doing that to the other consonants. So I have just three classes of consonants with a hard (sharp, short) and a soft (long, slow). I applied the same line of thinking to the vowels, there is one low vowel, to middle vowels and one high vowel and that's it. The 'h' is a slightly special case but I won't go into it here - long story short you can breathe it if you want or not, it doesn't matter.
But then there are a lot of consonants that are completely missing: L, R, F, S, W, CH, etc. I eliminated these completely because they are problematic across all languages that I've ever observed. People with different mother tongues trying to pronounce these sounds almost always have difficulty communicating with one another. The simple solution was to eliminate them.
Anyway, I also have a schematic grammar structure worked out for the language, as well, even though there is no vocabulary as yet. A long-term project I might work on is to translate one of my articles into this language in order to provide an impetus to derive a vocabulary for it. It would, of course, be massively work-intensive. The idea is that would be a basis to start some kind of Wiki and attract others to make their own vocabulary contributions based on the original pattern. Alas, one lifetime is not enough...
ThatOldGuy:This is a good point to make, but wouldn't this be akin to stating that it's unlikely that a universal medium of exchange (money) would occur because of the presence of exchange ratios for existing currencies? While this does facilitate exchange as it is, my OP asks about what would happen if the world were substantially different from what it is today (considering it from a point in time in which there are no nation-states and there is a free market).
Yes it would. But it's not merely the presence of the exchange ratios, but the low transaction cost of actually exchanging one currency for another. Currency exchange is a service which represents the market reaction to the state-imposed situation of international barter. It's a relatively low cost transaction, which is a good thing because if it weren't, there would be less international trade. The internet has made currency exchanges even cheaper and remarkably easy. I look at US online store, buy an item in priced in dollars using Paypal, and then the appropriate amount of pounds is taken from my account. I don't even have to think about. Many stores even allow me to see their prices in pounds on screen, so (apart from the shipping cost) for all I care, I could be buying from a shop here in the UK. This is amazing, and it does lessen the need for an international money to come (back) into being. Super-efficient currency exchange is the market's "workaround" to the monetary chaos imposed by states.
However, the best solution would still be for an international money to emerge, and I continue to predict that one will (and that it will be gold). Because currency exchange does still have some cost. And the costs to each individual of switching to a different money are fairly low.
If Tucker is right, the cost of language translation could become extremely low. And the costs of learning a new language are high. This is why I am skeptical that a universal language will emerge. It could become unnecessary.
It is my view that for both language and exchange - in the absence of obvious subversion of the natural order (e.g. language statutes, central banks, etc.) - there will always be coexisting local and global forms. The global form is eliminative and universal - only one money or language can be the global one. The benefits of convergence are simply too large. But local monies always co-circulated with global money even during the eras of gold or silver dominance in Europe and America.
I am skeptical that this is solely a symptom of territorial States. Ask yourself: What is the cost advantage of being able to speak directly to any given person on the planet compared to, say, the 20 or 30 million within a 200-mile radius of where you live? Most people are sedentary, not nomadic. Only if we were all a bunch of entrepreneurial nomads would it make sense to me that there would be a single, global money and language with no localized monies or languages.
The economic tradeoff is between the benefits of having a specialized vocabulary or specialized exchange medium (perhaps derived from a local commodity) and then trading with the rest of the world through translators (or bi-lingualism) and money-changers (or co-circulating monies) versus the benefits of adopting a money and/or language which may not be a perfect fit for the local terrain (as it were) but with the benefit of foregoing translators and money-changers.
In the case of large, metropolitan areas, probably all the benefits are on the cosmopolitan side of the equation. In small, rural areas, I'm not so sure. A brief look at history shows that law, exchange, money, trade tended to be extremely localized, even as transportation costs began to fall. Even today, people shop at different grocery chains or buy different kinds of foot creams in different areas of the same country (such as the US) where there are no large economic barriers creating this. I think that it's a consequence of the inherent sedentariness of the vast majority of the population. A network which does not change a lot can benefit from "shortcuts", that is, highly specialized, localized knowledge and language.
My point is simply that once a global language emerges, no one really needs to learn more than two languages no matter where they live - once a global money emerges, no one needs to carry more than two kinds of currency in their pocket.
As an aside, I think this also applies to law (in fact, I think law is the underlying factor that will determine whether local monies/languages continue to exist in teh face of a global alternative). When you look at how law works in the real world, all appearances aside, it is actually highly localized and varies significantly even between counties in the same state or between a metro area and the surrounding rural area. What is strictly verboten in one area may - just 20 miles away - be no big deal (ahem, carrying or transporting a firearm, for example). It all depends on the prevailing attitude within the local law enforcement, judiciary, etc.
Yet, absent national States that can enforce unfair legal arrangements across national boundaries - a global law (such as the old law merchant) would naturally emerge. I doubt that this global law would be eliminative of the variegated local law systems. Rather, they would tend to coexist in a kind of "power-sharing" arrangment where certain questions are a matter to be handled in the less rigorous local law systems (say, for example, a barfight) and other matters are to be handled in the more rigorous and formalized global law system (for example, disputes over drilling rights or failure to deliver an international cargo shipment, etc.)
I've been wanting to respond to this for a long time.
It may even be that in a Free-Market we see the flourishing of language. I was just joking with the Klingon comment but it got me thinking.
Without IP artists would need a way to distinguish themselves, what better way than to create a new language. We've seen it with Klingon and Elven. Disney has done it with the movie "Atlantis". We could possibly see "art languages", words spoken for the way they sound, and roll off of the tongue.