Ur a native Russian speaker, ye?
I’ve heard it said that when resting (Like, not talking or eating), native English speakers keep their tongue on the bottom of their mouth, while native Russian speakers keep their tongue at the top of their mouth. Confirm/deny?
Okay, so this is fascinating, and doubly so, because you actually took this commonly spread tidbit and flipped it around. Usually, when this gets passed around the internet it takes the opposite format:
[TEXT: A reddit post that reads “TIL that native German and Russian speaker’s tongues naturally rest on the bottom of their mouths while English speakers tongues rest on the top.”]
Which makes me wonder if YOUR personal experience is that of being an English speaker who rests their tongue on the bottom.
So, as we may already guess, everything is a little bit more complex than this calorie-free tidbit is making it out to be. Let’s delve deeper into why this sort of thing is so popular in pop linguistics and spreads so quickly.
There are two parts to this:
1) Like most pop-linguistics things, there IS some truth to this fun fact, but it’s not that simple.
2) By and large, this statement kind of assumes a lot about tongue position and secondly, it makes the speakers conscious enough of their own position to immediately try to jump to conclusions.
First thing I want to say is - many people reading this may assume that ‘tongue position’ can vary wildly, and there’s a TON of variation between ‘resting flat’ and ‘touching the roof of your mouth.’ You may feel like there’s TONS of room in there!
Actually, your tongue is HUGE. It takes up tons of space inside your mouth as a general rule. This is actually closer to the truth:
[Image Description: A realistic cross-section of a person’s jaw to nose area. The tongue muscle is shown on the diagram, taking up 90% of the empty space inside the mouth.]
What I mean is, it’s entirely possible that at any given point in time, your tongue position may depend on OTHER factors - like whether you’re breathing through your mouth or your nose, whether you keep your teeth partially opened even when your mouth is closed or whether you naturally clench your jaw. (Unclench that jaw, friend. Breathe.)
Also, you may not know this but regardless of what language they speak, most humans will touch a part of their tongue to the inside of their mouth to create an airtight seal - to prevent air from going into the mouth area when they’re breathing through their nose. This is because human evolution has not yet given us the patch update that separates our food holes and air holes completely.
(By the way, many other animals don’t suffer from this, which makes funny memes like this pointless.)
(Dolphins don’t breathe through their mouth!)
THAT BEING SAID - there IS some truth to this.
Tongue position is important in languages, and not every language has the same type of sound inventory! Which means that if ___ sound is more common in one language, and it requires one specific tongue position, it may be advantageous to have your tongue ‘at the ready’ so to speak.
Here’s a fun try-it-for-yourself science you can do:
Get ready to say the word ‘soup’. Now say it - but stop at ‘s’, don’t do the vowels. What shape are your lips in?
Now get ready to say the word ‘seed’. Again - say the ‘s’ sound and go no further. What shape are your lips in now?
Chances are, when you planned to say soup, your S came out through rounded lips, because you planned to say the ‘oo’ sound in soup next. But when you planned to say seed, your mouth is already making preparations for the ‘ee’ and stretching out sideways.
In the same way, when you are thinking about saying something and are getting ready to say it, your tongue and lips naturally move into position to prepare for that.
Now... CAN there be a default resting position for speakers of the same language?
I suppose there could be a GENERAL trend, yes. But I’m skeptical of any research that claims to know exactly what it is, because you’d need a HUGE sample size, controlled studies and etc. Plus this may depend on age, genetics, and a whole bunch of other stuff that will effect outcome.
I cannot give you any reliable answer to this question because as soon as I read your ask, my tongue moves and I can no longer say where it is NORMALLY. I think it’s probably at the top of my mouth.
I speak a lot of English in everyday life. Would it change if I went to Russia and was expected to speak Russian on the daily? Who knows.
Anyway, point of it all is - we need bigger sample sizes and more precise data!
kianamaiart
theartofmadeline
ellievsbear
origamiaround
blakekathryn
