A crazy idea has struck me. During my linguistics studies I have learnt that climate to some extent affects how we speak. In generally it can be said that the farther north you get the less people speak. It is quite confirmed in Europe but I am not sure if any studies have been done in America. My professor have talked about in general terms so I am going to assume that this applies everywhere.

The crazy idea is this, if climate affects how we speak does it affect how we think? If we look at the US there is a rather sharp divide between the conservative south and the liberal north. As every generalization it isnt all encompassing but it is there. If we look at Europe the Scandinavian countries together with the Netherlands are the most socially liberal countries on earth and the farther south you go the more conservative you tend to get. Look at Italy as a shining example with Berlusconi almost making Bush looking like a pinkie commie. If we go even further south both in Euro-Asia and America we have the extremely conservative Arabs and the strongly socially conservative latin Americans.

Is this a crazy idea or is it so that just as people speak more and more energetically the warmer the climate people get more, and more conservative the warmer the climate?

[ October 28, 2004, 17:12: Message edited by: joacqin ]

I'm not entirely sure; I thought Russian was quite an elaborate language, with many more syllables required than to say the equivalent sentence in English. I'm not sure where the Russian language originated though.

Well, as far as the U.S. is concerned, one thing I've noticed is the further south you go, the slower people talk. I'm not so sure that people talk more in the South as much as they take longer to say what they have to say.

Well in Canada Liberal-Conservative tends to be divided on an east vs west basis (at least if the blatant differences in the federal Liberal and Conservative party election results are any indication).

Personally I would attribute this to be a mostly urban-rural factor. Farming is big business in the western half of Canada and much less so in the east. In the latest election, the few seats that the Liberals did manage to win in western Canada were almost all in the larger cities (o.k. Calgary elected all Conservatives but Calgarians are almost all a bunch of cowboy wannabees :p ).

If we look at Ontario the southern part is more urban and not surprisingly tends to be more liberal.

But Canada is more liberal than the US no?

The further north you go in Ireland the more Scottish people sound and the faster they talk. Also the South used to be more consertive (homosexuality was banned in my lifetime and I am only 23) but these days the north is more liberal.

No, I don't think so. It actually is, the higher above the sea-level, the more conservative.

The thing is, Italians are very left but equally fond of owners of great football clubs. I think Italians are even more left than Swedes and Danes. At least, Unions and stuff did immigrate with them. On the other hand, nearly all from former Yugoslavia, are rather conservative. At, the social democrats have huge number of Italians, while the SVP (right wing) has a large following amongst people from the country previously known as Yugoslavia, yet both are south. Which is quite funny and seems counter-intuitive.

More intersting is the traditional line -> Catholics are left, protestants are right and Lutherans don't count.

You also could say, the North drinks less, but then Finland gets in the way.

But I've read something about Finland. And reason, why women play such an important role in Finnish society. It's the climate that forced a lifestyle, that made women more emancipated. It had something to do with the long winters and the resulting divison of work, that was quite different from more sunny regions. But I've forgot the details (was mainly starring at the pictures, anyway).

On the whole I would have to agree that Canada is more liberal than the U.S. but the difference is not as great as most people would have you believe.

If we look at same sex rights - sure they are currently passed into law but it was a very tight decision and some of the Liberal party members from the west voted against it because otherwise their constituents would have voted them out in a landslide in this year's election.

If we look at healthcare - sure we have Government run universal healthcare but it seems that there are always more and more things that are not covered and we are constantly hearing arguments in favour of privitization and/or allowing a two tier system where you can pay for a higher level (or quicker) service.

If we look at tolerance towards alcohol - Canada tends to look like the most arch-Conservative bunch of prudes that you ever saw. In Ontario the government controls all sale of alcohol, if you want to buy bottles of alcohol you have to go to the government run store - and they are not open past 9 PM. Bars and restaurants can't serve later than 2 AM. Heck, in my church they have always substituted grape juice for communion wine.

If we look at welfare - I think our system is quite a bit more robust but I really have not seen facts on this. In any event, we have a lot more seasonal employment here so people tend to need it more to help when their industry is out of work.

If anything, I think the North-South argument could be made based upon colder climates leading to greater urban concentrations and more seasonal jobs.

I'd have to agree with JSSB here - the North-South/Liberal-Conservative argument has much more to do with urban-rural factors than anything else. (Having lived in urban, semi-urban, and ultra-rural areas, I have seen this distinction all of my life)

Rural people tend to be much more conservative in many ways, both politically and socially - partially because of the tendency for values and beliefs to be passed down relatively untainted from generation to generation (growing up on the farm, so to speak), and partially because of the tendency for rural communities to be much more fundamentalist and holistic in their religion or spirituality. THere are, I'm sure, many other socio-economic as well as socio-linguistic factors to explain this.

Catholics are left and Protestants are right? You sure you didn't mistype? My definition is:

Catholics: conservative, traditional, drunk, partying, sensual, worldly, narrow-minded.
Protestants: progressive, sober, wordy, narrow-minded.

No wonder you find less alcohol the farther north you go. ;)

I agree with JSSB, it's Urban-Rural, at least in the US.

Here's a map of how the urban-rural factor played out in 2000: http://www.electoral-vote.com/images/counties-2000.gif