11 October 2015 – While on a recent trip to the U.S., I had an opportunity to attend an EU.U.S. trade summit. One of the sessions discussed the gravity model which explains trade volumes by including dummy variables to account for the commonality of language among trading partners. A rather detailed paper had been submitted which determined the effect of the degree of language commonality on bilateral trade. For instance, both English as a first language and English as a second language are found to be more important for exports than for imports.
I was reminded of a recent article in Science magazine by “Twitter buddy” Michael Blatter who wrote about an analysis of 37 widely varying tongues that found despite the apparent great differences among them, they share what might be a universal feature of human language: all of them have evolved to make communication as efficient as possible. It is an interesting read (click here).