Have you ever heard a term in a foreign language and, for no apparent reason, felt it sounded nasty or profane?
In any case, a recent round of studies hints that you might be onto something.
Researchers from the University of London discovered a feature of swear words that is common to many different languages and may be a universal phonetic pattern.
In general, swear phrases lack “approximants,” which are sounds made by bringing our lips, teeth, hard palate, or tongue close to one another but not quite making contact. This is according to the psychologists Shiri Lev-Ari and Ryan McKay. Consider the sounds of “yes,” “run,” or “war.” They all begin with the letter “y”, “r” and “w”.
Consonants in words containing approximations are less likely to drown out their neighboring vowels, creating a softer sound when spoken than those that use ‘plosive’ letters like p, t, and k, which make words like ‘pop’ or ‘kart’ sound blunt.
The near-universal lack of approximations in swear words helps makes them sound harsh, regardless of the language. The findings suggest swearing words might have been sculpted by a shared bias in the human brain.
Sound symbolism is the idea that some phonetics trigger a universal cognitive response that helps make the perception of certain sounds consistent across different languages.
For instance, studies have shown that speakers of more than 20 different languages all tend to associate the nonsense word ‘bouba’ with a round shape and ‘kiki’ with a sharp one.
These findings suggest some consonants might sound more cutting to human ears than others, and that could apply to swear words too.
To test that idea, researchers asked 20 fluent speakers of five distant languages to name as many swear words as they could.
After removing repetitions, variations, and racial slurs, researchers settled on 34 swear words and phrases in Hebrew, 14 in Hindi, 14 in Hungarian, 17 in Korean, and 26 in Russian.
Analyzing the sounds of these words, researchers found no indication that swears words contained more plosives than usual. But they did notice a clear absence of approximations in swear words, including the sounds of l, r, w, and y.
The authors created two experiments to see how these sounds are perceived.
The first study tested whether 215 participants who spoke six different languages were able to guess if a pseudo-swear word was offensive based on how it sounded.
Ultimately, those words that contained approximations were less likely to be considered swear words than those words that contained no hint of l, r, w, or y sounds.
French appears to have relatively more swear words with approximations than other languages, but even among French speakers, researchers found words lacking approximations were still selected as swear words 63 percent of the time.
A final follow-up experiment tested the dulling effect of approximations on euphemistic swear words like ‘darn’ (instead of ‘damn’).
The authors call these words ‘minced oaths’, and approximations are a common feature.
Compiling a list of 24 minced oaths that are altered versions of swear words, researchers found more evidence that l, r, w, and y sounds convey restraint.
The authors describe approximations as the verbal equivalents of compressed air hinges on doors. Even if you throw your words in anger, the sound of an approximant can muffle the perceived effect.
But this idea is probabilistic, the authors clarify, not deterministic.
Recent studies, for instance, have found that the sound of ‘it tends to be tied to small-sized objects in a variety of distant languages, but that doesn’t mean every human language has settled on a word like ‘Bambini’.
“What our results point to is an underlying cognitive bias, a predisposition that will have acted in concert with a historical accident to shape the evolution of swear words,” Lev-Ari and McKay write,
“Just as the association between nasal sounds and words for “nose” does not manifest in every language – or even in most languages – we should not expect that the pattern we have identified will manifest in every language, and even languages that reflect the pattern are likely to have to swear words with approximations, though fewer than would be predicted by their sound system.”
If the authors are right, sound symbolism might be more pervasive in our languages than many suspected. It goes far beyond object size or shape. Sounds might change how listeners perceive a speaker’s attitude, emotion, or arousal.
Linguists have been arguing for decades over whether human language is culturally acquired or a feature of our brain biology. Like most nature-nurture debates, the answer is likely to be more complicated than the question.
More evidence for the universal nature of sound symbolism is needed, but at least at the practical level, the authors say their findings could be used to help diffuse tense social situations.
Might be worth a try this holiday season.
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