What if the language we spoke had an influence on the transmission of Covid-19? This is a hypothesis that several researchers have looked into in recent months.
We already know that our postilions can stay in suspension for several hours and infect other people if we ourselves are infected with the virus. However, some languages would tend to make us issue more micro-droplets than others. The reason ? They contain a lot of occlusive consonants, in other words [p], [b], [k], [d] or even [g].
To pronounce these consonants, we have to completely block the air in our mouth, pharynx and glottis, and then suddenly release it. What propels aerosols, and therefore potentially the virus, note the French researchers Manouck Abkarian and Simon Mendez.
No obvious connection
According to linguist George Georgiou, English has many occlusive consonants, just like Norwegian or German. Japanese too, but they are actually used very little. According to Sakae Inouye, this would explain why American tourists were more infected with SARS than Japanese tourists in 2003 in southern China. According to his study published in The Lancet, Chinese sellers have spread the virus more by speaking English than Japanese.
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Last year, George Georgiou and Ahmad Kilani issued a similar hypothesis. They compared the number of Covid-19 cases in 26 countries and wanted to know if there was a link with the presence of occlusive consonants in the languages of the countries studied. The two researchers did note that more people had been infected in countries using this type of consonants, but not in a significant enough way to validate their hypothesis.
Is the “p” sound more dangerous than the others?
they have renewed the experience a few months later, this time focusing on 83 countries and the virus reproduction rate (R0). While the R0 was higher in the 25 countries speaking a language with occlusive consonants, the difference with the other states was once again not large enough.
There is therefore no evidence at present that English favors the transmission of Covid-19 more than French, Spanish and Italian, which do not use many occlusive consonants. However, George Georgiou and Ahmad Kilani noticed that there was a correlation between the consonant [p] and transmission of Covid-19. “Languages with a more frequent use of sound [p] may have a better chance of spreading the virus, ”the study authors conclude.
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