Language
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Words, grammar and how people make meaning.
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How babies find words in a stream of sound: transitional probabilities
Babies hear speech as one unbroken smear, with no gaps between words, yet somehow they start picking out words long before they can say one. One clue sits in…
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 English plurals say s, z or iz: the wug test
Say 'cats' and 'dogs' out loud and listen to the last sound. One is a hiss, the other a buzz, and 'buses' adds a whole extra syllable. English spells all three…
Why the same sound is a b to English ears and a p to Spanish ears
Say "bat" and "pat". The only physical difference is a tiny delay between your lips opening and your vocal cords buzzing, about 12 milliseconds for an English…
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%…
Why English spelling doesn't match how words sound
Around 1400, English spelling roughly matched speech. Bite sounded close to "beet", meet roughly like "mate", and house like "hoose". Then, over about three…