Cooper's language proximity paradox states this: language similarity has an inverse relationship to population
density. That is: the greater the distance one must travel between human contact the greater the likelihood of being
able to communicate with someone in a language you can both understand. Areas with higher population density tend to
have extreme regional variations in their speech. There is a higher chance their languages will be unintelligible.
An example of this phenomenon would be southeast Asia. It is a virtual witch's brew of languages of different language
families and sub-families. It is also one of the most densely poplated places on earth. Case in point: India,
the Phillipines, Vietnam. Let us look at Africa. The African continent has roughly 1,600 seperate languages.
However, the continent has a population of around 800 million people. It is not as densely populated as Southeast
Asia or the Indian sup-continent. In addition, the majority of Africa's languages belong to the Bantu sub-family.
Therefore there is a greater amount of mutual intelligibility between them. In Europe the more densely populated western
regions have more language diversity than the more sparsely populated eastern expanses. In America we have New York
city.
This all points to a natural human tendency towards tribalism. The closer we come in contact with others,
paradoxically, the more likely we are to emphasize barriers and manufacture differences. Perhaps this is why people
admire America. Our lack of population density, high degree of language compatibity and GDP is unmatched in the world.
Before I turn away from America let me note that Pre-Columbian America might at first glance be an exception
to Cooper's paradox. There is a vast array of American Indian languaes froｍ a multitude of language families.
However, 50 years prior to the arrival of settlers at Jamestown and Plymouth Rock, the pyramid building Mississippi Indians
mysteriously vanished. Their trade language was mutually recognizable across the continent. What could have caused
the disappearance of the Mississippi Indians? Is it really what the history books tell us? Why did the Mississippi
disappear but the Algonquin, Cherokee and Powhatan remain? If we acount for the Mississippians Cooper's theory holds
up, even for the Americas.
Another subcomponent of my theory is that geographical proximity does not predict language similarity. In addition
to the disparity between Japanese/Ainu, Spanish/Basque we have Arabic/Berber, Bantu/Khoisa, Swedish/Finnish, Russian/Estonian.
The list goes on and on and on. Finnish is more closely related to Turkish linguistically than it is to its geographical
neighbor Swedish.
In addition there seems to be no correlation between language and race. Do we define an Arab in terms of language
or in terms of genetic characteristics? Who are the Polynesians? Is the Austro-nesian language family an "African"
or an "Asian" language family? What about Greece? If we do a cross-cultural comparison of Greek and the Austronesian
language families we will find a lot of similarities. Both phenomena can be described according to Cooper's language
ball theory. Their intricate cultural, linguistic and ethnic connections are so intertwined that it will be impossible
to tease them apart. Greece remains inextricably linked to both Africa and Europe; Polynesia to Africa and Asia.
