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21: What words sound spiky across languages? Interview with Suzy Styleslingthusiasm.com Lingthusiasm Episode 21: What words sound spiky across languages? Interview with Suzy Styles Most of the time, a word is an arbitrary label: thereās no particular reason why a cat has to be associated with the particular string of sounds in the word ācatā, and indeed other languages have different words for the same animal. But sometimes it may not be so arbitrary. Take these two shapes: a sharp, spiky šÆ and a soft, rounded š and these two names: āboubaā and ākikiā. If you had to assign one name to each shape, which would you pick? (Hereās a pause to let you think about it.) If you said that the spiky shape was kiki and the round shape was bouba, youāre like 90% of English speakers who answer this question. But does this work the same way for speakers of other languages? What about languages that donāt have a /b/ or a /k/ sound, or that have other features, like tone? In this episode of Lingthusiasm, your host Lauren Gawne talks with guest linguist Dr Suzy Styles about how language interacts with your other senses like vision and touch, and doing research across different cultures and languages. Suzy is an Assistant Professor at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, and runs the BLIP (Brain Language Intersensory Processing) lab. Read the transcript here Announcements: This monthās bonus episode on Patreon is about forensic linguistics. Gretchen and Lauren discuss the reasons why you might see a linguist in a courtroom, and whether Gretchen could write a note and convince people it was from Lauren. The least crime-filled crime podcast episode youāll ever listen to! We also announced two new Patreon funding goals, the first ($2,000) is to film our first video episode, taking a look at gesture. The second ($2,500) is to film at least one video interview discussing signed languages with a deaf linguist. Weāre excited by the possibility of making these video episodes about linguistic topics that are a bit hard to convey in audio-only form! Here are the links mentioned in this episode: The bouba/kiki effect on Wikipedia The problems with doing research only on WEIRD: Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic people BLIP lab KoviÄ V, SuÄeviÄ J & Styles SJ (2017). To call a cloud ācirrusā: Sound symbolism in names for categories or items. PeerJ, 5(e3466), 1-18. Open Access: https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.3466 Shang N & Styles SJ (2017). Is a high tone pointy? Degree of pitch-change in lexical tone predicts of sound-to-shape correspondences in Chinese bilinguals. Frontiers. 8(2139), 1-13. Open Access: https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.02139 When does maluma/takete fail? Journal article When does maluma/takete fail? Superlinguo summary An article about the Syuba language The most common speech sounds across languages 3D-printed ācloudā and āspikeā models that Lauren and Suzy used to do the bouba/kiki test Lingthusiasm episode 6: Sounds you canāt hear for more about how babies learn sounds and episode 17: Vowel gymnastics for more about how vowels work in different languages You can listen to this episode via Lingthusiasm.com, Soundcloud, RSS, Apple Podcasts/iTunes, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also download an mp3 via the Soundcloud page for offline listening. To receive an email whenever a new episode drops, sign up for the Lingthusiasm mailing list. You can help keep Lingthusiasm ad-free, get access to bonus content, and more perks by supporting us on Patreon. Lingthusiasm is on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Tumblr. Email us at contact [at] lingthusiasm [dot] com Gretchen is on Twitter as @GretchenAMcC and blogs at All Things Linguistic. Lauren is on Twitter as @superlinguo and blogs at Superlinguo. Lingthusiasm is created by Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne. Our senior producer is Claire Gawne, our editorial producer is Emily Gref, our production assistant is Celine Yoon, and our music is āAncient Cityā by The Triangles. This episode of Lingthusiasm is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike license (CC 4.0 BY-NC-SA).