Have you ever heard a word in another language and thought it sounded rude or profane for some unknown reason?
Well, new research suggests you can do something about it.
Psychologists from the University of London have found the words we use to swear that are compatible in different languages, and can represent the code of the modern phone.
According to psychologists Shiri Lev-Ari and Ryan McKay, swear words around the world often do not have ‘almost’ – words that are heard by bringing our lips, teeth, mouth or tongue to close to each other without contact. Think of the y sound in ‘yes’, the r sound in ‘run’, or the w sound in ‘war’.
Consonants in words with almost all adjacent vowels are less likely to interfere with neighboring vowels, making sounds less pronounced when spoken than those that use ‘plosive’ letters such as p, t and k, making words like ‘pop’ or ‘kart’ sound less clear. .
The near-universal absence of swear words makes them sound harsh, regardless of language. These findings suggest that profanity may have been produced by biases that occur in the human brain.
Phonological symbolism is the idea that certain phonemes trigger a cognitive response that allows the sounds of certain words to be consistent across languages.
For example, research has shown that speakers of more than 20 languages associate the nonsense word ‘bouba’ with a round shape and ‘kiki’ with a sharp one.
These results suggest that some consonants may sound sharper to the human ear than others, and this may also apply to profanity.
To test this idea, researchers asked 20 fluent speakers of five distant languages to name as many swear words as possible.
After removing repetition, variations, and racial slurs, the researchers settled on 34 profanities in Hebrew, 14 in Hindi, 14 in Hungarian, 17 in Korean, and 26 in Russian.
When analyzing the tone of these words, the researchers found no evidence that profanity had more pitch than usual. But he noticed the absence of profanity, including the words al, r, w, and y.
The authors conducted two experiments to assess the generalization of these words.
The first study tested whether 215 people who spoke six languages could judge whether fake swear words were offensive based on how they sounded.
Finally, the words that contained the comparison words were less likely to be judged as profanity than the words that did not contain the words al, r, w, or y.
French seems to have more swear words than other languages, but even among French speakers, researchers found that words with no equivalent were still classified as swear words 63 percent of the time.
A final follow-up experiment tested the weakening of estimators of profanity such as ‘darn’ (instead of ‘damn’).
The authors call this word ‘minced oath’, and it is almost a common part.
By compiling a list of 24 swear words made up of modified profanity, the researchers found more evidence that l, r, w, and y are used to sound restrained.
The authors describe it as almost synonymous with air pressure on the doors. Even if you throw your words in anger, the words of a pretender can distort your thoughts.
But this idea is probabilistic, the authors clarify, not deterministic.
Recent research, for example, has found that the ‘i’ sound tends to be attached to small objects in various distant languages, but that doesn’t mean that every human language has settled on a word like ‘bambini’.
“Our results show a cognitive bias, which may have been acting in conjunction with past risk to produce changes in profanity,” Lev-Ari and McKay wrote.
Just as the connection between nasal words and the word “nose” does not appear in any language – or even in many languages - we should not expect that the pattern we have found will appear in every language, even languages that show this pattern. they can have a comparable amount of profanity, though less than what can be said through their hearing aids.”
If the authors are right, more meaningful symbols may be found in our languages than many think. It goes beyond the size of an object or shape. Words can change the audience’s perception of the speaker’s thoughts, feelings, or arousal.
Linguists have been debating for years whether human language came from a culture or part of our brain. As with many environmental debates, the answer may be more complicated than the question.
More evidence of the universal nature of emotional symbols is needed, but on a practical level, the authors say their findings can be used to help demystify difficult situations.
It might be worth a try this holiday season.
The study was published in Psychonomic Bulletin & Reviews.
