Browse
3 breaks
AllBiologyComputingEarth & SpaceEconomicsEngineeringFood ScienceHistoryLanguageMathsMindMusic & SoundPhysics
Why Latin p became English f: Grimm's law and the sound-shift chain
Latin says pes, English says foot. Latin tres, English three. Latin cornu, English horn. The swap is not random: when the Germanic languages split off, their…
Why Spanish sounds faster than Vietnamese yet says just as much
Listen to Spanish or Japanese and it seems to rush past; Vietnamese or Thai can sound almost unhurried. Yet when researchers timed 170 people reading the same…
Why everyone agrees which blob is 'bouba' and which is 'kiki'
Show people a soft blob and a spiky star and ask which one is bouba and which is kiki. The words are made up, yet in the classic version of the test about 95%…