Geneticists have famously tracked small differences in the human genetic code to trace the evolution and spread of humans out of Africa. Languages can change more quickly than genes and are not necessarily inherited from one’s parents, although linguists are able to follow similar clues to uncover how languages have changed and migrated over millennia.

Now, scientists at Stanford and other universities have combined large databases of globally distributed linguistic and genetic data, revealing in greater detail how languages might change in parallel with genes.

The results were recently published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The researchers incorporated genetic data from 246 worldwide populations with 728 phonemes from 2,082 languages. Phonemes are the minimal sound components that can distinguish meaning between two words. “To” means something different than “do,” so “t” and “d” are distinct phonemes, said lead author Nicole Creanza, a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford. There are roughly 40 phonemes in the English language. More.

See: Phys.org

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