Science News

"This article gives us some insight into why, despite being regular clickers ourselves, many of us can’t help but hear African clicks as noise-like when they’re used in words where we expect consonants to be. Our brains have plenty of experience in hearing clicks—just not in that particular role. It may also explain why speakers of click languages are bemused by our inability to hear them as plain old consonants."

Last year, a report claiming to support the idea that the origin of language can be traced to West Africa appeared in Science. The article caused quite a stir.

Last April, a linguistic study likened the spread of the sounds of language to the human gene pool, and used this information to suggest language arose once in Africa 10000 years ago.