9 ms·
Bouba/kiki effect
- Retr0id 2y agoHN is kiki
- jesprenj 2y agoMastodon is bouba? "?" is bouba "!" is kiki
- tigerlily 2y agoBouba is you
- re 2y agoNot sure if this is a reference to the game "Baba Is You", recently discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40689759 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40689759 But that post did make me think of this effect, especially as another character in the game is named "Keke"
- bhaney 2y agoReference goes the other way. The character names in Baba is You are explicitly references to this effect
- re 2y agoI realize that, I more meant that I was wondering if the earlier post about the game reminded anyone else about this effect (hence its Wikipedia page being posted here one day later).
- thih9 2y agoPrevious discussion from 2021: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27885703 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27885703
- dang 2y agoThanks! Macroexpanded: Bouba/Kiki Effect - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27885703 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27885703 - July 2021 (94 comments) Bouba/kiki effect - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8372550 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8372550 - Sept 2014 (1 comment) (Reposts are fine after a year or so; links to past threads are just to satisfy extra-curious readers)
- moritzwarhier 2y agoThe waveforms for "Bouba" are less "spiky" I'd guess: fewer overtones, less noisy, more tonal, so more round and quasi periodical
- viraptor 2y agoFourier transform is a "bouba -> kikki" transform.
- OmarShehata 2y agothis implies that humans have an intuitive sense of the shape of the waveform, which I think would be surprising!! And also empirically testable (not saying you're wrong, but it's not necessarily obvious to me as true. The sound is a vibration/signal, how our brains interpret it may have no correlation to its "shape". Do we have an intuition for "spiky" electromagnetic signals? maybe we do, that's why looking at nature, smooth curves and such, is empirically more relaxing for people than artificial environments..?)
- moritzwarhier 2y agoHigher frequencies carry more energy, also every human has a sense of waveforms. It's called "sound". Tonality and sound differentiation are deeply important to speech as well as for recognizing animals. Then there's music, of course :) But I guess you were getting at some sort of synaesthesia? Indeed an interesting question how that is related. I was referring to waveforms because of the duality with sound
- rcxdude 2y agoI think the surprising thing would be if the logic goes high frequency -> spiky waveform -> spiky shape, because that would imply that that particular representation of the sound is being used as part of the intuition. Which would be unusual, as it's not generally how people experience sound (for sure the opposite doesn't really occur: even someone very used to looking at waveforms will struggled to actually understand a sound by looking at the waveform to anywhere near the detail of listening to it). Even with synesthesia it tends to be associated with colors/feelings/smells etc in a way that doesn't tend to match with technical representation of sound.
- jesprenj 2y agoWhat about the effect where for some pairs of words that don't theoretically have ordering preference (kiki/bouba vs bouba/kiki), (plus/minus vs minus/plus), (on/off vs off/on), (positive/negative vs negative/positive) have some psychological order that most people use and if the other ordering is used, it sound weird? Does this effect have a name?
- viraptor 2y agoYes, there's a Vsauce short about that, but given the amount of them there's no way I'll find it... Edit, found it another way: "Irreversible binomial" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irreversible_binomial https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irreversible_binomial
- jimbobthrowawy 2y agoReading examples of unwritten rules in the English language always feels kind of unsettling to me. Like the order adjectives are supposed to appear in.
- foreigner 2y agoI've noticed that comparing languages - e.g. in Hebrew they say "less or more" instead of the English "more or less".
- stavros 2y agoSame in Greek, now that you mention it.
- incognito124 2y agoYes. As per etymologynerd, English speakers tend to like trochaic stress rhythm in sentences, like "salt and pepper" or "lee and sophie" where a different ordering sounds weird.
- zoky 2y agoMaybe, but there are plenty of counter examples: “Chicken and egg” “Cookies and cream” “Heaven and Earth” “Chapter and verse” Seems like some phrases just are a certain way, and inverting them sounds wrong just because that’s what we’re used to hearing.
- paulgerhardt 2y agoFifteen years ago I went to a museum exhibit on Reggio Emilia teaching methods that I still think about once a week or so. (Reggio Emilia is similar to Montessori in that it is child-led exploration but different in that encourages multiple cross-modal forms of expression to aid comprehension.) The Reggio Emilia exhibit featured children performing a cross-modal exercise of drawing the sounds of various types of shoes walking down stairs to illustrate the "Hundred Languages of Children" concept. It showed how kids translate auditory experiences into visual ones - high heels would been drawn with spikey patterns and construction boots would be big wavey ones. This is reminiscent of the Bouba-Kiki effect. But other smaller nuances such as duration translating to span and loudness to magnitude. I took away a fascinating insight from childhood cognition: children effortlessly bridge sensory modalities, an ability that often diminishes in adults to the point that asking an adult to “draw this sound” or “build something that feels like this smell” is met with a blank look but which a child is often completely game to try. Tasking an adult with a cross-modal assignment literally does not compute. This cross-modal perception revealed that children possess a remarkable synesthetic intuition, using diverse forms of expression to understand and interpret the world—an ability I had completely forgotten as an adult, which hindered my communication with young children in early education environments. It highlighted the importance of nurturing cross modal communication styles and once one notices it (like in say Mr. Rogers opening ritual to use multiple queues to engage children’s parasympathetic nervous system) one unlocks a whole new vocabulary with not just children but adults. It’s been a powerful tool in my creative toolbox since.
- spencerchubb 2y agoI wonder if the ability diminishes in adults, or if adults are more inhibited and worried about looking foolish. Try the same experiment with adults after drinking alcohol!
- sethammons 2y agoIf you take this picture and ask adults and kids which way the bus is traveling, kids get it right more often than adults https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/which-way-bus-going-why-adults-fail-kids-pass-simple-bailey-mlod https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/which-way-bus-going-why-adult... Spoilers: adults prune information for more efficient processing and in doing so lose information
- userbinator 2y ago"Bouba" sounds like a slang term for a certain part of the human anatomy which is also rounded and curvy.
- ComplexSystems 2y agoI have always thought this association is partly from some intuition we have about the mechanical and acoustic properties of hypothetical things that would have this shape. The shape with sharp, jagged edges would occur in real life if it were made of some hard material, perhaps, like glass, metal, etc. The shape with the soft, curvy lines would occur if it were made of something softer and possibly elastic. It doesn't take much intuition to guess that the sharper shape will produce a sound closer to "ki," with sharp transients and lots of high frequencies - like a piece of glass or metal falling - and the rounded one perhaps closer to "bou," with softer transients and perhaps a time-varying resonant frequency as the shape is malleable (think of the sound of a drop of water landing).
- madebythejus 2y agoThe effect is somehow also visible in the shapes of the letters, with ‘B’, ‘O’ ‘U’ being rounded and soft. The letters ‘K’ and ‘I’ are made of sharper shapes featuring triangles and lines. I wonder if letter designs were influenced by the sounds made by objects.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- schoen 2y agoThese are great guesses, but it doesn't look like they match with what's known about the earlier forms of these letters. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Latin_script#Ultimate_derivation_from_Egyptian_hieroglyphs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Latin_script#Ul... Particularly, the degree of sharpness or roundness of a particular letter may have changed a lot over time. I guess it's still possible that there's been some kind of psychological effect at certain times, but it doesn't look like it was a strong and consistent factor in the history of the alphabet.
- rusticpenn 2y agoThat is because of the focus on writing itself. Its easier to make sharper letters on clay tablets, making such letters on palm leaves ( popularly used by some cultures for writing) would tear the leaf, so the writing became more rounded in these regions.
- why_at 2y agoI always thought Bouba/Kiki would make cool "matching" tattoos. Strangely, everyone I've asked says they would want to be Bouba. No one wants to be Kiki.
- bee_rider 2y agoI’ll be Kiki. I’ve been meaning to lose weight.
- nyanpasu64 2y agoSometimes you have to be the Kiki to keep the other Kikis from walking over you.
- smeej 2y agoIt's funny to me that my gut reaction was, "Oh. Why do they want that? Bouba would be such a weird tattoo compared to kiki." I don't have tattoos. I don't really want them (I appreciate the artistry of them, but I can't stand seeing things on my skin). I don't know why I should care, never mind care the opposite way of most people.
- atleastoptimal 2y agoSeems very self-evident/obvious. In real life, soft, round things make soft, muted sounds. Sharp things make higher pitched, shorter sounds. The sounds of bouba and kiki reflects this.
- otho 2y agoSomeone made a script (for English) based on this concept: https://pcho.net/takeluma/ https://pcho.net/takeluma/
- Daub 2y agoHow amusing. The images he uses for bouba/kiki are non-standard. In fact, they were sourced from an educational rescource I made over ten years ago. So nice to see them again, though in retrospect it would have been better had I used the standard set.
- mdiep 2y agoA friend of mine made a fun (upcoming) cooperative party game based on this: - BGG: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/408945/boubakiki https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/408945/boubakiki - Kickstarter (Funded): https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/grandgamersguild/bouba-kiki-stroop-reprint/description https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/grandgamersguild/bouba-... The cards in the game have nonsense words and illustrations. Players work through various scenarios where they try to agree about which nonsense words should go with which illustrations.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- Daub 2y agoAs an art teacher I use this effect to demonstrate how meaning in an image can be inate, as opposed to socially constructed. To demonstrate social construction I use an image of an arrow. To an Australian aborigini an arrow 'points' in the 'wrong' direction as it's directionality is derived from its semblance to a birds footprint.
- casey2 2y agoThe most we can say is that some languages (notably NOT mandarin Chinese with ~1 billion native speakers, so the idea that it's ingrained in all humans is laughable at best) have a preference for giving the long bou and boo sound to rounder objects and the shorter ki and ka sounds to sharper objects, and that language affects our naming preference.
- FabHK 2y agoMost languages, including some without writing system, but not Mandarin Chinese, indeed. https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rstb.2020.0390 https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rstb.2020.039... Chinese/English speakers also seem to map the shapes differently to tone contours: https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.02139/full https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.... (Note that this article contains some tangible object instantiation of the bouba/kiki forms.)
- acyou 2y agoMama/dada effect: Children everywhere in the world say mamamama as their first syllable, which is why mama means mother both in Chinese and in anglo-franco-hispanic-germanic-latin languages, and everywhere else. They then say dada, baba, papa, which is why baba means dad in both China and in latin languages. Ramachandran and Hubbard suggest that the kiki/bouba effect has implications for the evolution of language, because it suggests that the naming of objects is not completely arbitrary. - Nonsense, mama is an easier syllable for mouths to make, that's the sound that cats make as well as cows.
- acyou 2y agoMaybe that's why we call them "ma- mmals" ?
- nemomarx 2y agoThink mammaries, which comes from an old word for milk, so probably from mother, yeah.
- martyvis 2y agoAnd when the made up word "bouba" is presented I immediately thought of the slang word "boob" for breast so that round shape is a good fit.(Also bubble and bauble are also near sounding and round)
- gjm11 2y agoYou say that like it's a joke, but they're called mammals because they have mammae -- breasts, udders -- and although I don't know completely for certain I'd be flabbergasted if Latin mamma weren't very directly related to mama etc. (Wiktionary says it's from Greek "mamme" which it alleges is a back-formation from babies' "mama", and cites a learned-sounding reference, but I don't know whether anyone actually has more than conjecture here.)
- troad 2y agoThe Occam's razor explanation for the worldwide distribution of mama / dada is very, very straightforward: (a) they are the easiest syllables, and therefore some of the first and most common syllables children babble, (b) parents are extremely willing to read meaning into the sounds their children make (what parent doesn't think their kid is a little genius?), and (c) parents are eeeever so slightly self-interested in what that meaning should be.
- jojobas 2y agoSo the article mentions the congenitally blind, but not congenitally deaf. It would be pretty mind-blowing if it still worked.
- andoando 2y agoSounds and visuals I believe both map to a more fundamental language of the human brain.
- radiojosh 2y agoOne of the best TED talks ever given, by VS Ramachandran - a video describing some of the fundamental mechanisms of the brain. This video was the first time I heard Bouba and Kiki, but there's so much more going on in this talk. It's wonderful.
- richrichie 2y agoBut kiki is not a nonsense word in French.
- shanth 2y agoKuchi is stick in Tamil Banthu is ball in Tamil Kuchi <> Kiki Banthu <> Bouba
- m463 2y agothey match the waveform, and also the letter shape.
- Harmohit 2y agoI used to experience this had a kid! Not only did words and some names have shapes, but they were quite often coloured shapes. I have quite strong memories of some of the associations I made between names and shapes. However, I have completely lost the 'ability' as an adult. I do not feel it at all.
- Biganon 2y agoSynesthesia! I had the biggest conundrum as a child. I remembered my grandmother had two dolls on her shelf, one pink and one blue. One tall and thin, one short and fat. I also remembered that the colors "matched" the body types. But I can't for the life of me remember if it was "pink = tall and slim" and "blue = short and fat" or the other way round. Both make sense! It's like a synesthesia blue/gold dress, all happening inside my head!
- calini 2y agoI had some glimpses of this effect as a kid, where to me for example there was a strong association in my brain between the the letter E, the digit 3, and the colour green, especially light green. Same for C, 5, and light blue. As an adult, if I try to more strongly tap into my flavour of synesthesia, it starts to feel "made up"; Example, if I query my brain for "what's associated with 2" the response will be "orange, (but I think I just generated that now)" so I sadly kind of dismiss it.
- dclowd9901 2y agoI have likened this effect to “what sounds right.” I am curious about something with German, and would love feedback from native German speakers: “gendering” on German words seems to be largely arbitrary (as opposed to the romantic languages where gendering seems to align with how the culture associates the word to a gender). My suspicion, that has “felt” correct in most cases, is that gendering in German words is largely an artifact of which article sounds the most correct with the word. Sort of how we might use “a/an” with words that have consonant or vowel starting sounds in English. Is there any truth to this supposition?
- FabHK 2y agoDoesn't sound plausible to me. It does seem arbitrary more than related to the sound. There is der Titel and der Tisch, but die Tinte and die Tasche, das Tier but die Tür, etc. ETA: Having said that, certain endings strongly indicate a specific gender, e.g. for masculine: -or, -ling, -ner, -smus, -er, -ich, -ist, -ant, and -us. See e.g. here: https://grammar.collinsdictionary.com/german-easy-learning/how-do-you-work-out-the-gender-of-a-german-noun https://grammar.collinsdictionary.com/german-easy-learning/h...
- dclowd9901 2y agoThank you for your insights!
- inglor_cz 2y agoThere is a lot of randomness in linguistic gendering ... Czech genders are rather different from German genders, even though we are neighbours. Der Frosch (M, "frog") vs. ta žába (F). Das Messer (N, "knife") vs. ten nůž (M). Die Tat (F, "deed, act") vs. ten čin (M).
- dclowd9901 2y agoI’ve heard Czech spoken at full speed and I’m pretty sure it’s one language I’ll never actually learn
- 13of40 2y agoInteresting that the words acute and obtuse seem to follow the same pattern. Etymology says they come from ancient words for needle and club. Which also follow the same pattern.
- vinnyvichy 2y agoNiki Bourbaki is the name of a very well balanced multiperson. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolas_Bourbaki https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolas_Bourbaki
- 082349872349872 2y agoThe Bouba/Kiki effect would predict that Bourbaki is rounded in the front and spiky in the back? Is he a cyndaquil?
- Yenrabbit 2y agoThese have entered our common household vocabulary after I called one of our houseplants "a little too kiki for my liking" and was forced to explain. Humans love categories, it's great to have names for splits like this :)
- atoav 2y agoNow I finally know where ca. 2008 communist web series sock puppets Bubu and Kiki got their names from. What a flashback: http://www.monochrom.at/kiki-and-bubu/ http://www.monochrom.at/kiki-and-bubu/
- de_nied 2y agoWhen I hear or say K, T, or Ch, I hear a higher pitch frequency being used than B, M, L (which sounds like lower frequencies). Humans have a psychoacoustic effect that makes higher pitch sounds perceived as being louder. When somethting has a louder intial sound, but the transient sound is about the same, it makes it feel more snappy (like a snare, versus a kick). This is reminiscent of a jagged edge.
- anbardoi 2y agoIt's actually fucking insane that I'm seeing this pop up on HN right now, I literally just watched a VSauce video (posted like a year ago) explaining this bouba/kiki effect!
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- AdmiralAsshat 2y agoInteresting. I was given a similar "test" in high school, although the names given were Kepick and Oona. But the same preference was there: "kepick" with its "sharp" sounds favored the angled drawing, "Oona" the more undulating. There were some other questions as well, such as a hypothetical about which shape was male and which female (strong preference in the class towards "Oona" being female). I don't think I'm alone in this: I googled Kepick and Oona and found a reference from a 2012 blogpost: https://nwccapstone.blogspot.com/2012/02/meet-oona-and-kepick.html https://nwccapstone.blogspot.com/2012/02/meet-oona-and-kepic... So I have to ponder how bouba/kiki diverged into kepick/oona. Kinda wonder if some random schoolteacher remembered the study but didn't remember the exact names, substituted something similar, and then built it into a curriculum that got picked up by the education system.
- userbinator 2y agoOona is an actual female name, very common in Finnish. Incidentally, "onna" also means female in Japanese. "Kepick" sounds like a lockpicking tool, which also tends to be sharp and pointy.
- kayo_20211030 2y agoWhy has nobody mentioned Chomsky in this thread? The correspondence in the results between American English and Tamil just seems like something that should shout Chomsky. I know little about it, but some form of universality in language, and how humans see the shape of it, seems apt as a starting point.
- chinchilla2020 2y agoAlso Corman Mccarthy. His books carefully balance the 'sound' of the prose to help the reader imagine the story. That's why his writing has a poetic tone that drives some people crazy.
- dyslexit 2y agoI wonder if this effect can be explained by the we form the "bouba"/"kiki" sounds when we speak them. "Kiki" has a sharper enunciation when using your tongue and mouth to form it, while "bouba" feels more like an open round one.
- sizzle 2y agoWelp. Got it wrong. I thought of a Hawaiian flower when I heard Kiki and chose the flower looking one. I can also associate bouba to mean bulbous and choose the rounder one. My brain pattern matches like crazy.