The secret physics at the core of every syllable, starting with the first words we speak. Human language is an incredible thing: a combination of mouth sounds that we combine into words, sentences, ...

Listen closely to those baboon calls. They may tell you a thing or two about human speech. Scientists who studied baboons’ wahoos, yaks, barks and other vocalizations have found evidence of five vowel ...

Would you drive a SUV called a Himmer? Phonetic symbolism refers to the notion that the sounds of words, apart from their assigned definition, convey meaning. A new article applies this theory to ...

The sound of a word like “knife” or “truck” seems totally arbitrary–it’s just a random sound we’ve assigned to a thing, right? But for several decades, scientists have found good evidence that the ...

S ome people refuse to use baby talk with babies. The sing-song repetition of cute nonsense words commonly spoken by adults to infants—and pets—can have a grating quality that makes some people cringe ...

Does [a:] as in 'baa' sound more green or more red? And is [i:] as in 'beet' light or dark in color? Even though we perceive speech and color are perceived with different sensory organs, nearly ...