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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

A, E, I, O, U, and sometimes Y. You might have learned it as a chant, a song, or a simple declaration, but this is how you learned the vowels of English. You may have wondered, why is Y so unsure of ...