YOU can tell a lot from the way people speak. Russell Gray, for example, signals he is from New Zealand by saying "rite" instead of "rate". Sometimes that is enough to confuse. A few years ago, during a talk Gray gave while visiting the University of Oxford, Richard Dawkins interrupted to ask what he meant by "evolutionary rite". New Zealanders can only afford one vowel, Gray jokes.
As a trained biologist, Gray notes these differences with the same eagle-eyed curiosity that he has used to study the evolution of bird behaviour. "If you're looking at courtship displays in birds and how their differences are produced by descent with modification, it doesn't seem like a huge leap to think about languages in that way," he says. Living among the Pacific Islands – a hotspot for language diversity – Gray just has to listen to the sounds around him to hear ...
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