What shapes do you think of when you hear these sounds? Take the test – as the bizarre phenomenon shows, we are all thinking about the same thing
Whether you speak English, French, Japanese or even Zulu, it seems we all understand a secret universal language.
A new study has found that people match certain sounds we hear with certain shapes we see, regardless of where we come from.
To find out if you are one of them, you can take the official test below.
First, take a closer look at the two lines in the image: one at the top is jagged, while the other is flat at the bottom.
Then listen to the video, which will show you two audio examples.
The song labeled “Audio Sample A” consists of someone making an “L” sound, while “Audio Sample B” contains a rolled or trembling “R” sound.
All you have to do is tune the shape that you think best suits the sound.
According to the research, people around the world overwhelmingly associate the jagged shape with the R sound, while the flat shape is associated with the L sound.
Scientists say that humans associate certain sounds we hear with certain shapes we see – no matter what country we come from. The experts showed people a jagged line (top) and a flat line (bottom) before playing recordings of short sounds
Whether you speak English, French, Japanese or even Zulu, it seems we all understand a secret universal language (stock image)
This so-called ‘R/L effect’ was first tested by a team led by Marcus Perlman, professor of linguistics at the University of Birmingham.
He says that different sounds literally “have texture and shape” – as evidenced by spectrograms and oscillograms with rough or smooth lines.
“This may be due to a kind of iconicity – a similarity between the sound of the word and the texture it refers to,” Professor Perlman said.
For the study, Professor Perlman and his international colleagues worked with a total of 1,030 adult participants who together spoke 28 different languages.
These were English, French, Greek, Italian, Spanish, German, Russian, Danish, Swedish, Finnish, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin Chinese, Thai, Albanian, Romanian, Portuguese, Armenian, Turkish, Georgian, Polish, Estonian, Hungarian, Daakie , Palikúr, Farsi, Zulu and Tashlhiyt Berber, a language native to Morocco.
First, participants were shown pictures of the two lines – one jagged and the other straight – and asked to imagine running their fingers along each line.
Then the recording of someone producing the vibrated R sound was played, followed by the L sound before each sound was matched to one of the lines.
A total of 912 of the 1,030 participants (88.5 percent) matched R with the jagged line and L with the straight line.
Study author Marcus Perlman thinks that speech sounds have “texture and shape.” Shown: Oscillograms and spectrograms for recording the ‘R’ sound
Shown: Oscillograms and spectrograms for recording the ‘L’ sound. Note the smoother lines – a match for L’s smoother sound
Speakers of languages like Estonian and Finnish had the highest match rate of 100 percent, while the lowest (70 percent) were speakers of languages like Albanian and Mandarin Chinese
The bouba-kiki effect
The bouba-kiki effect is the association of made-up words ‘bouba’ with a round shape and ‘kiki’ with a pointed shape.
This association shows a similarity between speech sounds and visual properties.
Researchers have found that people make the connection in 25 different languages, which has “implications for the evolution of spoken language.”
Speakers of languages such as Estonian and Finnish had the highest match rate of 100 percent.
Meanwhile, the lowest figure (70 percent) was for speakers of Albanian and Mandarin Chinese, among others.
Professor Perlman emphasizes that there is ‘no right or wrong answer’ to the R/L test – but it is interesting to see how strong the effect is universal.
‘People have a very strong sense that the repetitive amplitude modulations of the R sound – on and off fluctuations of sound, corresponding to the intermittent movements of the tongue – bear a resemblance to the jagged shape of the line and to rough textures,’ he told MailOnline.
‘In contrast, the lack of modulations in the L sound gives a feeling of straightness or softness.’
The effect is thought to be as universal as ‘bouba/kiki’: the tendency to associate the made-up word ‘bouba’ with a round shape and ‘kiki’ with a pointed shape.
In a 2021 study, Professor Perlman and colleagues showed that the bouba/kiki effect exists among speakers of 25 different languages.
The bouba/kiki and R/L effects seem to indicate that all humans recognize a universal language – one we have barely scratched the surface of.
Although little scientific attention has been paid to date, the R/L effect is already being applied in the advertising industry.
In the 1980s, the American potato chip Ruffles used the slogan ‘Ruffles have ridges’, spoken with heavy emphasis on the vibrating R sound.
Spectrograms of this advertising slogan reveal vertical grooves known as ‘stripes’, which resemble the physical crinkled grooves in the snack.
“These kinds of cross-modal correspondences may have influenced the evolution of spoken languages and shaped the words we use to talk about texture and shape,” says Professor Perlman.
People have noticed the R/L effect anecdotally before, the academic added, and in a previous study he looked for shaky R’s in words referring to rough textures, but this is the first study to test the effect experimentally.