How are biological evolution and linguistic evolution similar?

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Likewise, extremely long words are selected against in most populations of minds.

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A Vietnamese friend of mine explained to me that Vietnamese is purely a 1 syllable word language, meaning there is no word in Vietnamese that has more than 1 syllable. I wonder if this particular trait of the language came about because people were selecting for 1 syllable words while selecting against any word that has more than 1 syllable.Here is a wiki link on monosyllabic language.And a google search turned up this wonderful page on Vietnamese.Edited by teen4christ, : No reason given.Edited by teen4christ, : No reason given.Edited by teen4christ, : No reason given.

CS writes

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Nobody. A better example would have been "mother". In almost every language, the word for mother begins with the "Mmmm" sound...

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Because the "Mmmm" sound is one of the easiest sounds a baby can make. All they have to do is make a noise and open the lips.In the same way, there are certain patterns in nature that we see get selected for from one organism to the next. A very obvious example is some kind of orifice that allows the consumption of matter to replenish the organism's chemical energy supply. Another is some kind of moving part or parts that allow mobility.It's sort of like the golden ratio or pi. There's really little other choice, if any.