Thanks to all the team who work with me on these! This is very much a collective effort these days, despite me being the face of it. Please do pull down the description to see everyone involved, and all the references!
Pikachu's name actually comes from Japanese onomatopoeia: "pika" for electrical sparks, and "chu" for a mouse squeaking, since Pikachu is literally an electric mouse
Bulbasaur's original Japanese name is Fushigidane. Though Pikachu's name does still stay the same in both Japanese and English, and still has sharp, short sounds in it, Bulbasaur's name changes a lot.
Gracidea also, Fushigidane (フシギダネ) is likely a pun for 不思議だね “meaning that’s strange” and 種 (tane) meaning “seed”. So while “Bulbasaur” is definitely round the Japanese name seems to come from a “sharp” word with the plosive “t”. Thus, that’s actually a contradictory example.
It may be that the letters acquired their current shape in part due to the influence of this effect, rounder sounds became rounder letters, sharper sounds became sharper letters.
A lot of the "rounder" sounding letters have rounded symbols: b, d, g, j, m, n, o, r. And some "sharper" sounding letters have pointier symbols: i, k, t, x. But not everything matches up, for example v, c, q, w, l. It does seem there could be an association here
I don't know if you realised this yourself, Tom, but when at the very start of the video when you say "one of these shapes is called Bouba, the other is called Kiki", your hand gestures were also indicative of this tendency to name shapes with certain sounds. When you said "Bouba" your hand was open and rounded, but when you said "Kiki" you pointed.
Judging by the thumbnail, I initially thought it would be a play on the sound of shapes vs the sound of color. I felt the sharp shape was more of a kiki and the round one bouba, but the colours on their own wouldve been the other way around. Bouba is a much stronger, confident name/word to describe the powerful red, where as a cool light blue was more like the sharp, neat and swift name kiki. Turns out it was just about the shapes :(
@@georgiykireev9678 True, saying "murder" sounds like you're just slurring along, especially compared to things like "Mord" or "Mort" in german or french
Nice one. But it's Baba. Edit: Dudes, I know it's Bouba and Kiki instead of Baba and Keke. I got it now. Im slow and sleepy today. I got cocky and I thought original commenter got it wrong. But I'm the one who's wrong. Please don't be mean to me.
This video makes me wish I’d followed my initial dream of getting my PhD in linguistics. It has also, however, satiated my need for new linguistics facts temporarily, so thanks.
go get that degree. do what you love. your time is limited on earth, make the best of it. don't spend a second doing something you don't love unless you have to.
@@Akhimed I mean, it's hard to injure yourself with a red balloon. But a blue spike? While I certainly do agree that colors subconsciously convey meaning, I don't think it'd do much in this particular case.
@@Svonko idk. I’m getting something like ‘they don’t know the word, but since it’s *like* onomatopoeia (word directly represents sense of something in the real world) , they use it instead of whatever word might or might not exist
@@Svonko I thought it was a legit word like where onomatopoeia represents the sound of something anomatopia/eia would represent the shape of something (anatomy - - ano-...)
The moment you displayed bouba and Kiki, I immediately said to myself "I know what's going on." I then I matched bouba with the blob image and Kiki with the spikey. image
I'm a native korean and I would definitely associate kiki with the pointy one and bouba with the other one even if those were written in korean alphabets. very interesting topic. and the thing that people actually succeeded in guessing chinese characters was mind blowing. I mean how is that even possible???
isn't Hangul building blocks written in the shape of articulation, e.g. ㄴ for n (ideogram for the position of the tongue), ㅅ for s, etc... I mean, i gotta wonder if the same thing happened in Phoenician/Latin at some point. They took hieroglyphs and decided on their sound somehow.
In russia, 1910 we had even futuristic poets, studying these questions it some sort of way - they wrote their poems in not-existing language - only sounds and phonems. Their point was to actualy create something able to be understood by anyone without translation, but with sound - emotions, feelings. You can google some and listen! It will be interesting to hear what do you think about them c;
@@snowpunk6190 and a Tit is a type of bird, which (like Tom said) has many sharp claws and points, hence the sharp sound. ... And I think I just realised something else.
actually scratch that, the bouba would be the "ok fine we will do it your way then, its ok" and the kiki would be the "WHY WOULD YOU PUT A SPOON IN THE FORK COMPARTMENT !? "
for the bird and fish test, i think it would be interesting to have a group in which they ask for reasoning, prompting them to likely think about associations, and a group where they just take their initial reactions and compare results. that way, you could maybe test whether our instinct is to compare associations (there’s a lot of variables for this but it still might be neat)
But maybe we wrote the letters that way originally because we associated the "K" sound with sharp things and the "B" sound with softer things? Just a hypothesis
Stephen Hill well this could be a six of one / half dozen of another problem. Tom's phrasing makes a claim about researchers generally, which may even be technically true. But implies an intention, I don't think is rampant. (Researchers : I'm not going to publish this because...) Mine points to the file drawer problem, which I'm to understand is more of a systemic problem with how modern science is done. (There exists a suite of factors which result in research with negative findings not being published)
part of the issue is that typically no one will care about negative results - they're much less likely to get read or cited. publishing a paper is a ton of work and it's not very motivating to do all that to say "well we tried this and found nothing surprising"
Is it that researchers avoid publishing negative results, or do they refactor their papers so that the result is a positive? For example: "This bird is not found in the desert" can be rephrased to "This bird is often found in the jungle". Publishing a positive fact can be seen as more constructive than a negative, and you often find the positive after digging around after discovering a negative. Following the bird example: "The bird isn't in the desert, well where is it? Ah, it's in the jungle...Okay I'll publish that"
Well there's aUI which takes this phenomenon to the extreme, mapping each phoneme with an associating semantic element, then building the whole language from these phonologically "intuitive" letters.
Having color-grapheme synesthesia, this was very interesting and validating to watch. I've brought this up with other people before and they always look at me funny. I can read in colored dots.
that's so cool! sorry ppl are weird about it, my friend has something similar and they've literally had like brain scans that show certain parts of her brain are activated differently than others :0
Haha which is funny because I perceive the letters b o u and a as different shades of brown/red/orange, and my i is a baby blue, ie the exact opposite of the colours of Bouba and Kiki. But yes, having an innate sense of which is which is rather validating.
Even other people with the same condition will look at you funny, because they'll associate colors differently. I had someone argue me about the color of a chord on piano, and I had to explain that synthesthesia isn't definitive and everyone has their own experience with associations.
Do you have a sort of pencil with which you can write colored dots quickly? I know there are multicolored pencils, but they may have too few different colors for all the letters, I'd assume. Also, wow; it would be very easy to use this ability to make cheat sheets in plain sight by just having a colorfull wristband or something of the likes. Assuming of course, that the teacher isn't in the know about your synesthesia.
Possible correlation: things that make high-frequency noises (like "i") also tend to start and stop suddenly (like unvoiced plosives "k", "t"), while things that make low-frequency noises (like "oo") tend to be longer and more drawn out (like vowels blending into voiced plosives "b", "d" and nasals "m", "n").
That's not true in either German or Dutch though, our sound 'ie' (which is equivalent to your 'ee' - in pee, not in beer) is heavily drawn out in words, however, it does get accompanied by k and t, like in kier and niet. There is the word niemand though, which does sound kind of longer?
@@dawsonschreiber8664 Nah, 'pee' is marginally 'sharper'. Like I could accept an alternative spelling of 'pee' with one or 2 i's but not beer. It is more flat sounding, drawn out and many even add an 'er' at the end.
try not to look too deep into how the effects like this "memory insertion" manifest themselves, or you'll risk breaking the concepts of time, memory and experience all at once through this "pointy ound" {.prism}
It was part of an episode from the Lingtusiasm podcast. The 2017 research mentioned was done by Lauren Gawne and this video was directed (?) by Gretchen, hosts of that podcast. Maybe you remember that?
Ah yes, SciShow Psych did a video on bouba and kiki a month ago. I knew I'd seen a video on this recently, but couldn't remember which channel it was from, though I knew it wasn't Tom 😛
Something interesting about your jello analogy: There is a slang term in Taiwanese Mandarin to describe the texture of soft, bouncy foods that English doesn't have, or at least, English speakers don't tend to use "bouncy" to describe foods. Bouncy foods like jello, tapioca pearls, udon noodles, etc are described as "QQ", like, literally pronouncing the letter 'Q', which doesn't fit the Bouba or Kiki theory. Like Tom said, there's a lot of exceptions, I just wanted to share an example that I have a personal connection to Edit: Actually, thinking about it more, this may be because Chinese is a logographic language, and the letter 'Q' is very round and "bouncy", hence the association
The main association I made was that all the letters in Bouba are rounded and all the letters in Kiki are sharp. Was that part of the reason they chose those words, or maybe the shape of the letters themselves reflects the kind of sound it makes?
I'll bet the shape of the letters reflect it! Because especially if the chinese words/characters weren't said outloud for participants, they're associating them mostly based on shape.
I think it's mainly the repeated association theory. In practice, we find that round, bulbous things are more likely to sound like "bouba" and sharp, thin things are more likely to sound like "kiki". Even the noises from our own mouths physically feel like those shapes. "Bouba" involves puffing your mouth round, and "Kiki" involves sharp consonants and tight vowels.
oh god i just finished my thesis paper on this effect and behold, 10 hours later tom scott makes a video about it explaining everything far better than i would ever comprehend :')
I got the “Bouba” and “Kiki” one wrong because “Bouba” sounded similar to “Boom” and chose the sharper one for it because it was more like an explosion.
I have synesthesia and everything is like that, a word can be sharp and a colour and have a personality. For example the number 6 is orange and is the kind of person you never have any quarrels with
@@Jtzkb It was absolutely not braincraft. It was a Tom Scott video, and the shapes were exactly the same. This might be a redux, but to my memory it's basically the same video.
This is the strongest déjà vu I've ever felt. It wasn't any of the other videos people have mentioned so far. Not SciShow, QI, or Braincraft. The colors of the shapes and Tom's voice are super clear in my memory. It's possible I could just be going crazy along with everyone else.
Am I losing it, or does anyone else have a memory of Tom Scott making this exact video like, 6 years ago? (Edit: Definitely wasn't SciShow for me, I don't watch that channel)
In LaTeX (a "computer language" for typesetting math), the code for a matrix with parentheses () around it is \matrixp, and the code for a matrix with brackets [] around it is \matrixb. I always mix them up, and I blame my subconscious association of b with round things and p with sharp things.
It's also when you're making names for fantasy novels. While I do use "real names" in my novels, I'm always looking for a certain sounds that I feel matches the character's personality. Softer sounding names for softer characters.
i love linguistics. all the language related questions are almost always about humanity, how we think how we feel. this is awesome. and yes, sounds and shapes and even genders has some sort of correlation. nice playlist tom, thanks 👍
as a kid i also sorted 1-20 to which one looks more mascule and which looks more feminine, i recently talked about this with my friends and they didnt understand how "one" looks more mascule and 2 rather elegant and femine. i tried to explain it to them but failed XD
this is REALLY interesting from an irish perspective (i do not know irish gaelic i have just been reading up on it for pronunciation and basic grammar) because vowels are sorted into two categories, broad and slender. the broad vowels are a, o, u. the slender vowels are e, i. and i just a few days ago i was thinking that it just made SENSE that they were divided like that and now this video put everything together for me
Halfway through I was like "HEYYY WHERE'S THE SYNESTHESIA ASPECT" and Tom didn't disappoint. Purely based on the shown colors I would have arranged them the other way around tbh
Gonna guess in advance: Bouba is the blue one because the blue one looks bouncy and bubbly, which comes off the tongue as such as well. Kiki on the contrary has a way sharper and rougher sound to itself, fitting the pointy ends.
Very interesting! This sort of reminds me of how Japanese uses onomatopoeia, specifically 擬態語 (gitaigo) and 擬情語(gijyougo), both of which are categories of words that describe more abstract states or means. Pikapika and kirakira describe sparkling or glistening, sorosoro and noronoro describe slowness and sluggishness, similar to how you describe the “universal” linguistic patterns.
@@glowstonelovepad9294 "Pika" is quite exactly is the word for a flash of light - as in that of lightning. Hence 'pikapika!" You seem to know some Japanese. (More than me!! But I try.) if so: すみません私の日本語!
@@glowstonelovepad9294 actually, Pikachu's name is a combination of two Japanese Onomatopoeia: Pikapika (electric spark sounds) Chuchu (mouse sounds) Hence ピカチゥ (If I had to translate it, I would choose 'electric mouse' or something vaguely in that direction)
I hate to admit I recognize this too because of One Piece with the Glint-Glint Fruit (Pika Pika no mi) and the Slow-Slow Fruit (Noro Noro no mi) Also, "PIKA PIKA PIKARARARARA!!"
This has also been called "phonosthematics." In English the syllable "ump" is associated with low, round, heavy, or malleable things: e.g. lump, bump, dump, sump.
I was a test subject in a study about this phenomenon! The researcher was Japanese and they were trying to find this sort of connection with sensations of touch - it was really cool and I got to drink some delicious tea, 10/10
Having seen the thumbnail I had already associated Kiki with the sharp shape and Bouba with the rounded one. I'm not going to lie and try to be one of the "different" people, I absolutely believe in a link between phonemes and shapes, it's also something I've thought about before. Glad to see it isn't just me.
Also, it happens to be that in multiple linguistic families, "bouba" is used for a similar purpose as in the English language. You might or might not know that if you are bilingual. When one claims that people would refer to rounded things as "bouba" because of its implementation in one's language, it is quite likely the other way round and "bouba" is implemented after being round.
Kiki has sharper letters and the shape itself is sharper. Bouba has rounder letters and the shape was round. The shape most associated with Kiki was also red (not sure if the colors were in the studies), something that's associated with harshness and anger. While the one usually labeled Bouba is blue, a feeling associated with calmness and sadness (again, not sure if the colors were in the studies). That's the way I see it and how I label things.
Ironically, it's my synaesthesia that makes the Kiki / Bouba test difficult for me, because the colours of the shapes don't match the colours I associate with the words. Kiki = dark green, light blue, dark green, light blue. So only a green and / or blue shape would go with that name. Bouba = dark bluish green, orangey yellow, dusky pink, dark bluish green, bold red. So it would need to be a multicoloured shape to fit that name. But it's usually presented with the spiky shape in red, which doesn't really go with either of the names but is closer to Bouba because at least that has one red letter in it (A), and the paint splatter in blue, which is a bit more like Kiki because that has two blue letters in it (I). So my brain is trying to go both ways at once - it associates the "sharpness" of the Kiki sound with the spiky shape, but the colours of Kiki kinda with the paint splatter; and associates the "roundness" of the Bouba sound with the paint splatter, but the colours of Bouba not really with either of them but slightly more with the spiky shape. Synaesthesia is cool, but it really doesn't let things be simple.
@@leavewe "Begging the question" is the name of a logical fallacy in which the speaker is assuming the premise under examination is true. It doesn't mean "raises the question" like most people use it. Although academic linguists usually assert that under descriptivism it is perfectly fine to now use "begs the question" as people have been using it in that context for so long now, its meaning is understood although technically incorrect.
@@tubica_de Quite Interesting, a TV show in the UK about trivia where they trick the guests into saying trivia that's common but actually wrong (but actually not wrong, sometimes the producers are just assholes) just search for it on youtube, it's a lot of fun
Thanks to all the team who work with me on these! This is very much a collective effort these days, despite me being the face of it. Please do pull down the description to see everyone involved, and all the references!
Hi
5 days ago?
5 days ago...
5 days ago means that it was private ok?
two
Bulbasaur and Pikachu makes more sense now.
oh my god... yes
Pikachu's name actually comes from Japanese onomatopoeia: "pika" for electrical sparks, and "chu" for a mouse squeaking, since Pikachu is literally an electric mouse
xanadu the point still stands. “pika” being a word for electrical sparks actually proves it
Bulbasaur's original Japanese name is Fushigidane. Though Pikachu's name does still stay the same in both Japanese and English, and still has sharp, short sounds in it, Bulbasaur's name changes a lot.
Gracidea also, Fushigidane (フシギダネ) is likely a pun for 不思議だね “meaning that’s strange” and 種 (tane) meaning “seed”. So while “Bulbasaur” is definitely round the Japanese name seems to come from a “sharp” word with the plosive “t”. Thus, that’s actually a contradictory example.
What's interesting is that the letters "Bouba" are as round as the shape while "Kiki" has the pointy bits down.
Romit Roy Chowdhury That’s what l thought!
It may be that the letters acquired their current shape in part due to the influence of this effect, rounder sounds became rounder letters, sharper sounds became sharper letters.
I thought that was the point [sic] of this presentation.
That was what I thought the video would be about when i clicked on it.
CloudGamer36 sure.
How about the shape of the letters themselves? kiki = sharp and straight letters, bouba = all the letters are rounded.
but wouldn't that only apply for languages that use the latin alphabet? plenty of languages will have completely different characters
A correlation between the shapes of letters and the two shapes, or between shapes of letters and their pronunciations? Both maybe?
A lot of the "rounder" sounding letters have rounded symbols: b, d, g, j, m, n, o, r. And some "sharper" sounding letters have pointier symbols: i, k, t, x. But not everything matches up, for example v, c, q, w, l. It does seem there could be an association here
@@JohnJohnson-yi6jg I wouldn't call "d" "round-sounding" at all either.
@@wqiz1818 키키 / 부바
Well of course people are gonna associate "Bouba" with soft and round.
Nice
Nice
Nice
Nice
Nice
Fun fact Tom actually recorded every single video in one day which is why his shirt never changes
One thing sure is that his videos are normally recorded much earlier than the release dates.
@@mukrifachri i thought that his videos are live
Have you seen his update video where he's packing like a dozen identical shirts? It's hilarious.
@@mukrifachri actually that's a common misconception. Tom actually records these videos after they're released
Don't expose him
I don't know if you realised this yourself, Tom, but when at the very start of the video when you say "one of these shapes is called Bouba, the other is called Kiki", your hand gestures were also indicative of this tendency to name shapes with certain sounds. When you said "Bouba" your hand was open and rounded, but when you said "Kiki" you pointed.
@@jennhoff03 Same
Wow thats great!
That was probably on purpose
@@jennhoff03 Believe it or not, I actually though Kiki was the blue, curved one.
Judging by the thumbnail, I initially thought it would be a play on the sound of shapes vs the sound of color. I felt the sharp shape was more of a kiki and the round one bouba, but the colours on their own wouldve been the other way around. Bouba is a much stronger, confident name/word to describe the powerful red, where as a cool light blue was more like the sharp, neat and swift name kiki. Turns out it was just about the shapes :(
'R' is among the most menacing of sounds. That's why they call it 'murder' and not 'mukdek'.
- Dwight Schrute, 2009
Doesn't work with the modern English r tho
@@georgiykireev9678 The modern english r has, to my knowledge, always sounded roughly the same
@@TheRenegade... Medieval English had a hard r, like every other Germanic language
@@georgiykireev9678 True, saying "murder" sounds like you're just slurring along, especially compared to things like "Mord" or "Mort" in german or french
AAARRRRRRRRGHH!!!!
This still doesn’t tell me why Twitch chat is obsessed with the blue one
carbonasadu
I thought I was being unique but I see now that I have been beaten by many others in this race 😔
@@lusciouslocks8790 ablanaba is uslaese
@@lusciouslocks8790 I will not try to scan your qr-code. It's most likely a rickroll.
@@scottowens398 it was a mango
I only know that Bouba Is You and Kiki Is Move.
Comment Is Funny. Bouba Has Laugh.
Nice one. But it's Baba.
Edit: Dudes, I know it's Bouba and Kiki instead of Baba and Keke. I got it now. Im slow and sleepy today. I got cocky and I thought original commenter got it wrong. But I'm the one who's wrong. Please don't be mean to me.
@@deovolente5867 It's called a play on words
Hahaha
@@deovolente5867 somebody doesn't appreciate situational humor
This video makes me wish I’d followed my initial dream of getting my PhD in linguistics. It has also, however, satiated my need for new linguistics facts temporarily, so thanks.
Cool
Swag I love your music
It's never too late.
Go for it still!
go get that degree. do what you love. your time is limited on earth, make the best of it. don't spend a second doing something you don't love unless you have to.
Fun fact: In Romania "buba" means injury, which i am thinking at when i look at the red shape
@@whatsallthebrouhaha Probably if you change the colors around there will be different results
@@Akhimed I mean, it's hard to injure yourself with a red balloon. But a blue spike? While I certainly do agree that colors subconsciously convey meaning, I don't think it'd do much in this particular case.
Yea I was thinking “bomb” and it kinda had the shape of an explosion
In America, when little kids get cuts, scrapes or bruises, we sometimes say "You got a boo-boo". I wonder if there's a relation to Romanian...
Da si eu lmao
'Bouba' and 'Kiki' remind me of objects/characters from the puzzle game 'Baba is You' called 'Baba' and 'Keke'
I wonder if this is where the names came from?
@@hyper_lynx It absolutely is, the developer has confirmed it!
@@PermianExtinction Neat!
for me too
SENSE IS MAKE.
As a native English speaker I did it based off the words "blob" and "spikey" and always felt that those two words were almost like an anomatopia
Onomatopeoia?
@@Svonko idk. I’m getting something like ‘they don’t know the word, but since it’s *like* onomatopoeia (word directly represents sense of something in the real world) , they use it instead of whatever word might or might not exist
Bubble, blob, blimp, bloom, bump...
Peak, spikey, tick...
@@Svonko I thought it was a legit word like where onomatopoeia represents the sound of something anomatopia/eia would represent the shape of something (anatomy - - ano-...)
@@Svonko Close. Onomatopoeia. But I'll guess it was a simple typo, as you just permuted two letters!
The original words were “Baluba” and “Kitiki”
I feel like the original words look more like the shapes
those are really fun to say
In one example, it was “maluma” and “takete”
@@harperreese264 thats how i heard it
@@harperreese264 maluma is a latino singer actually
The moment you displayed bouba and Kiki, I immediately said to myself "I know what's going on." I then I matched bouba with the blob image and Kiki with the spikey. image
Gabe___R same, it was like I already knew exactly which was bouba and which was kiki. It’s kinda scary how that works out
Same
Kiki and bouba is what I call my balls.
@@TrollTrollski sounds like you need to visit the doctors.
@@LucasImpulse I did, and they told me I have ŋoba and tlet...
I'm a native korean and I would definitely associate kiki with the pointy one and bouba with the other one even if those were written in korean alphabets. very interesting topic. and the thing that people actually succeeded in guessing chinese characters was mind blowing. I mean how is that even possible???
same here
people understand hanzi, just like people understand emoji and emoticons
isn't Hangul building blocks written in the shape of articulation, e.g. ㄴ for n (ideogram for the position of the tongue), ㅅ for s, etc... I mean, i gotta wonder if the same thing happened in Phoenician/Latin at some point. They took hieroglyphs and decided on their sound somehow.
I'd rather be hit by a "noba" rather than a "tlet".. sounds less pointy.
ng is a nasal, and t is a plosive...
Ngoba does poison damage.
@@EDoyl yes and tlet is Armor piercing
I once created a character called noba for a comic book
ŋoba, not noba
This entire video is basically this:
Warm water tastes round and cold water tastes pointy.
Why is this true
@@nosferathu258 Ice vs steam bubbles?
🤔
Jesus, this comment blew up
ur a fuckin genius or something ? that one comment blew my mind more than that entire video
In russia, 1910 we had even futuristic poets, studying these questions it some sort of way - they wrote their poems in not-existing language - only sounds and phonems. Their point was to actualy create something able to be understood by anyone without translation, but with sound - emotions, feelings. You can google some and listen! It will be interesting to hear what do you think about them c;
а что конкретно гуглить то?
Спасибо
Didn't the dadaist and futurist poets do the same?
The word you're looking for is music.
Velimir Khlebnikov!
Thank you to Persona 5 for teaching me about this. That game was weirdly educational
My thoughts exactly lmao
Persona fans explaining how Persona 5 invented everything
@@TheGreenTH-camr never said it invented it. Just saying I enjoyed how the game taught you about interesting stuff from time to time.
Wait, P5 talks about this?? Today I learned.
@@gmestanley2214 a question in the classroom. Forgot which day though
This reminds me of the Monty python sketch about “tinny” and “woody” words.
I was about to say that! And all the British bad words are deep and rounded...except for "tit"
@@snowpunk6190 and a Tit is a type of bird, which (like Tom said) has many sharp claws and points, hence the sharp sound.
... And I think I just realised something else.
Goooooooorn.
*OOOORGASM*
𝙀𝙍𝙊𝙂𝙀𝙉𝙊𝙐𝙎 𝙕𝙊𝙉𝙀
don’t ask who wears the pants in a relationship, ask whos bouba and whos kiki
and to translate the kiki wud be the pants wearer. ...i think ?
actually scratch that, the bouba would be the "ok fine we will do it your way then, its ok" and the kiki would be the "WHY WOULD YOU PUT A SPOON IN THE FORK COMPARTMENT !? "
My personality is definitely mostly "Bouba" with a couple of "Kiki" traits.
@@thesage1096 If a kiki wore pants would they wear them like this or like this?
@@Odima16 like how or how?
for the bird and fish test, i think it would be interesting to have a group in which they ask for reasoning, prompting them to likely think about associations, and a group where they just take their initial reactions and compare results. that way, you could maybe test whether our instinct is to compare associations (there’s a lot of variables for this but it still might be neat)
Enter the German language
why
@@BambooTime just enter it
@@jaquino6786 alright
You are going into the German Language
@@Rexvivor i'm trying
" 'Bouba'? Very WOODY sort of word, wouldn't you say?"
"Oh, yes dear. But 'kiki', oh, no, more a sort of TINNY kind word."
WorldNews92 caribouba gorn!
frightful words
@@CraftyTeo perfectly dreadful.
I also know the monty python but don't know any jokes to make
Oh, dear, don't say `tin' to Rebecca, you know how it upsets her.
For me it is the shape of letters like "K" which are actually pointy and "B" which are smooth.
That’s wha t I thought too
But maybe we wrote the letters that way originally because we associated the "K" sound with sharp things and the "B" sound with softer things? Just a hypothesis
This was also tested in languages that don't use the latin alphabet.
Also the leters were created after the sounds,
What if the shape of the letters came from the sounds?
What if "Bouba" was called "Mouma" instead? I think "M" is (visually) as pointy as "K", but the sound is round.
hehe
booba
🅱️🅾️🅾️🅱️🅰️
🅱️🅾️🅾️🅱️🅰️
🅰️🅱️🅾️🅾️🅱️🅰️ℹ️©️
🅿️🅾️🅾️🅿️🅰️
🅱️🅾️🅾️🅱️🅰️😩
Booba round, my only reason...
of course thats coming from a damn anime profile picture
@@manulstrider Danganronpa
Boobie
same
Touch grass
"Researchers often don't publish negative results."
Maybe more fair to say "Negative results are less likely to be published."
Stephen Hill well this could be a six of one / half dozen of another problem.
Tom's phrasing makes a claim about researchers generally, which may even be technically true. But implies an intention, I don't think is rampant. (Researchers : I'm not going to publish this because...)
Mine points to the file drawer problem, which I'm to understand is more of a systemic problem with how modern science is done. (There exists a suite of factors which result in research with negative findings not being published)
part of the issue is that typically no one will care about negative results - they're much less likely to get read or cited. publishing a paper is a ton of work and it's not very motivating to do all that to say "well we tried this and found nothing surprising"
@Stephen Hill I mean, isn't that the whole point here?
Cool
Is it that researchers avoid publishing negative results, or do they refactor their papers so that the result is a positive? For example: "This bird is not found in the desert" can be rephrased to "This bird is often found in the jungle". Publishing a positive fact can be seen as more constructive than a negative, and you often find the positive after digging around after discovering a negative. Following the bird example: "The bird isn't in the desert, well where is it? Ah, it's in the jungle...Okay I'll publish that"
One's a splat, the other is a bang. Problem solved
Nice
Thanks now i dont have to watch the vid
@@ikejime77 anytime bro
I'd like to give you a grant for your research.
@@joshmbrown42 bro you're onto something here
The word "kiki" also just *feels* sharper on my tongue than "bouba."
Kiki means pp in french
Pp
Pp
So Pp and Bouba
@@nine_d2499 pp
"The Bouba Kiki Distinction" is a home run of a band name btw
Preferrably a capella.
I was thinking more Big Bang Theory episode.
keda1981 why not both?
@@nate_storm Fair.
Could be a for-children band or a math-metal-melt your face off- heavy band.
Or both
"That is a lot of citations"
*cries because there's no more citation needed
John Giorgetta what does this mean
Conlangers: "write it down, write it down!"
Oh believe me, we figure this kind of stuff out on our own, though it's nice to see confirmations everywhere.
one of the fun things about conlanging is the constant ability to find new, fun linguistics features
@Mekal Covic YOU MONSTER
haha yep i love trying to work sound symbolism into my language
Well there's aUI which takes this phenomenon to the extreme, mapping each phoneme with an associating semantic element, then building the whole language from these phonologically "intuitive" letters.
Having color-grapheme synesthesia, this was very interesting and validating to watch. I've brought this up with other people before and they always look at me funny. I can read in colored dots.
that's so cool! sorry ppl are weird about it, my friend has something similar and they've literally had like brain scans that show certain parts of her brain are activated differently than others :0
If you don't mind, could you tell me a bit more about this? I've never heard of it before and it seems really interesting!
Haha which is funny because I perceive the letters b o u and a as different shades of brown/red/orange, and my i is a baby blue, ie the exact opposite of the colours of Bouba and Kiki. But yes, having an innate sense of which is which is rather validating.
Even other people with the same condition will look at you funny, because they'll associate colors differently. I had someone argue me about the color of a chord on piano, and I had to explain that synthesthesia isn't definitive and everyone has their own experience with associations.
Do you have a sort of pencil with which you can write colored dots quickly? I know there are multicolored pencils, but they may have too few different colors for all the letters, I'd assume.
Also, wow; it would be very easy to use this ability to make cheat sheets in plain sight by just having a colorfull wristband or something of the likes. Assuming of course, that the teacher isn't in the know about your synesthesia.
pika = zappy = spike
math checks out
Woah a verified
I must reply
quick mafs
tip: don't say pika next to a brazilian
@@Victorsandergamer?
Possible correlation: things that make high-frequency noises (like "i") also tend to start and stop suddenly (like unvoiced plosives "k", "t"), while things that make low-frequency noises (like "oo") tend to be longer and more drawn out (like vowels blending into voiced plosives "b", "d" and nasals "m", "n").
That's not true in either German or Dutch though, our sound 'ie' (which is equivalent to your 'ee' - in pee, not in beer) is heavily drawn out in words, however, it does get accompanied by k and t, like in kier and niet. There is the word niemand though, which does sound kind of longer?
@@Arcessitor native English speaker here, the "ee" in pee and beer are pronounced the same btw
Dawson Schreiber, in the way I speak, the “ee” in beer sound slightly higher (for lack of a better term).
@@Arcessitor I don't mean words, I'm talking about sounds you'd hear in nature, like insects, animals, water, that sort of thing.
@@dawsonschreiber8664 Nah, 'pee' is marginally 'sharper'. Like I could accept an alternative spelling of 'pee' with one or 2 i's but not beer. It is more flat sounding, drawn out and many even add an 'er' at the end.
this makes sense for russian speakers too. i asked my friends about “Буба” and “Кики” and the results are what you’d expect
booba hehe
🅱️🅾️🅾️🅱️🅰️
@@xboydubose7254 🅱️ruh
pepelaugh
@@xboydubose7254 XD
glad everyone’s in agreement
Now we need a movie called Bouba's Delivery Service.
That's.... that's the rule34 fanfic-
@@magicdawn1973 HOLD TF UP
@@magicdawn1973 EXPLAIN
@@magicdawn1973 WHAT
@@magicdawn1973 *NO!* >:O
Is this a reupload? Or am I having the strongest deja vu of my life?
Edit: Looks like I inserted Tom into the SciShow video on this topic in my memory
try not to look too deep into how the effects like this "memory insertion" manifest themselves, or you'll risk breaking the concepts of time, memory and experience all at once through this "pointy
ound" {.prism}
You're not the only one.
It was part of an episode from the Lingtusiasm podcast. The 2017 research mentioned was done by Lauren Gawne and this video was directed (?) by Gretchen, hosts of that podcast. Maybe you remember that?
Ah yes, SciShow Psych did a video on bouba and kiki a month ago. I knew I'd seen a video on this recently, but couldn't remember which channel it was from, though I knew it wasn't Tom 😛
Thankyou. I swear he's done this video already. Feel like I'm going crazy, was searching the comments for everyone saying the same
Something interesting about your jello analogy: There is a slang term in Taiwanese Mandarin to describe the texture of soft, bouncy foods that English doesn't have, or at least, English speakers don't tend to use "bouncy" to describe foods. Bouncy foods like jello, tapioca pearls, udon noodles, etc are described as "QQ", like, literally pronouncing the letter 'Q', which doesn't fit the Bouba or Kiki theory. Like Tom said, there's a lot of exceptions, I just wanted to share an example that I have a personal connection to
Edit: Actually, thinking about it more, this may be because Chinese is a logographic language, and the letter 'Q' is very round and "bouncy", hence the association
well 'kyun kyun' is the sound that bouncy t**ies make
maybe they should rename poop to teep so i dont keep eating it
Ahh yes, this jello tastes bouncy.
What is "jello"? Is it similar to jelly?
Thanks for sharing this! It’s really interesting how writing systems change our perspectives.
The main association I made was that all the letters in Bouba are rounded and all the letters in Kiki are sharp. Was that part of the reason they chose those words, or maybe the shape of the letters themselves reflects the kind of sound it makes?
I'll bet the shape of the letters reflect it! Because especially if the chinese words/characters weren't said outloud for participants, they're associating them mostly based on shape.
To me it sounds like “spiky” and “bulbous.”
Or bouba sounds like “boba”, like boba pearls
bouba reminded me of "blob"
haha nice
I think it's mainly the repeated association theory. In practice, we find that round, bulbous things are more likely to sound like "bouba" and sharp, thin things are more likely to sound like "kiki". Even the noises from our own mouths physically feel like those shapes. "Bouba" involves puffing your mouth round, and "Kiki" involves sharp consonants and tight vowels.
oh god i just finished my thesis paper on this effect and behold, 10 hours later tom scott makes a video about it explaining everything far better than i would ever comprehend :')
Karma
I'm not sure if that's satisfying, validating or downright frustrating.
I got the “Bouba” and “Kiki” one wrong because “Bouba” sounded similar to “Boom” and chose the sharper one for it because it was more like an explosion.
There is no wrong answer
Me too... I chose kiki as round blob and bouba as spikey... 🤔
I guess why though?
I have synesthesia and everything is like that, a word can be sharp and a colour and have a personality. For example the number 6 is orange and is the kind of person you never have any quarrels with
The letter K is angry.
Crazyperson.exe has opened
I'm the same way only with numbers, but for me 6 is a magenta and a bit of a troublemaker
Do you not have quarrels with six because it's very easy-going and agreeable, or because it's rather large and will beat you up?
What word is the type of guy to be annoying
Didn't I watch this 1 or 2 years ago ??? Feel like I'm going crazy
@@Jtzkb It was absolutely not braincraft. It was a Tom Scott video, and the shapes were exactly the same. This might be a redux, but to my memory it's basically the same video.
This is the strongest déjà vu I've ever felt. It wasn't any of the other videos people have mentioned so far. Not SciShow, QI, or Braincraft. The colors of the shapes and Tom's voice are super clear in my memory. It's possible I could just be going crazy along with everyone else.
@@Jtzkb it was a Tom scott video
I remembered watching this years back. I just can't remember where
It's possible you remember it from the show Brain Games since there was an episode about this
I only know about this because of the Persona 5 test questions
I was about to comment this, too
BROTHER
Same but with the 4 color map theory instead
I knew it before that and actually forgot it even was in P5 before I saw this comment
OMG! NOW I KNOW WHY THIS SEEMED FAMILIAR! Thanks mate.
It honestly could be because of the shapes of the letters.
Kiki- has kind of sharp corners in the letters
Bouba- a round shape in the letters .
Why does the end card for the "Tom's Language Files" playlist seem to depict Tom screaming?
Because learning is screaming
Because, uhh
əəəəəəəəəəəə
Am I losing it, or does anyone else have a memory of Tom Scott making this exact video like, 6 years ago?
(Edit: Definitely wasn't SciShow for me, I don't watch that channel)
Put me in a straightjacket too, I had the very same thought!
I thought I was the only one thinking about that 🙄
Well throw me in a padded cell and throw away the key; I also think I've seen this video before.
Yes im literally so sure ive seen this like a year ago
Same here. I'm sure I've seen the beginning before in another Tom video.
The bird/fish thing is probably more down to high, sharp sounds being imitative of chirping.
Yes if you pitch down they arent, sounds more like drunk people whistling and dinosaurs
That’s what I thought aswell
this is just onomatopoeia. make these objects physical and move them around and the spiky one will sound sharper than the blubbery one
I've always felt that Glockenspiel and Xylophone have the wrong names.
Glockenspiel sounds more woody, where as Xylophone is more metallic.
Glockenspiel is called Glockenspiel because you’re playing (spielen) something that sounds like Glocken (Bells)
@@djsilversun yes, I know.
That's not what any of this is about.
I totally agree with this
@@RedS0n Glockenspiel doesn't really sound woody for me but xylophone does sound metallic
One might even say, woody vs. tinny
In LaTeX (a "computer language" for typesetting math), the code for a matrix with parentheses () around it is \matrixp, and the code for a matrix with brackets [] around it is \matrixb. I always mix them up, and I blame my subconscious association of b with round things and p with sharp things.
Just think brackets start with b
@@endertobias1908 That moves the association to the round parentheses and sharp brackets. And I'm not sure it solves it.
I can relate to this so much ... Thanks for pointing it out!
While reading it I already mixed it up...
@@endertobias1908 Unless you speak British English, in which case you need to remember it's p for brackets and b for square brackets.
Being able to read 2 of the characters at 1:29 and know they were wrong gave me more joy than it should've
same!! :3
Same, specifically 好/Hao and 大/Da.
I read all except one
Lemme guess,
大 and 好?
Maybe 小 and 好 or 小 and 大 though.
Same specificqlly small and large
It's also when you're making names for fantasy novels. While I do use "real names" in my novels, I'm always looking for a certain sounds that I feel matches the character's personality. Softer sounding names for softer characters.
Never was i expecting to see the inspiration for the names Baba and Keke
But if Baba is You, then who's Keke...?
*look behind you*
@@revimfadli4666 move?
Keke is still round though
Didn't know anyone else ayed that
Tom, you are my favourite on this platform. I could listen to you talk about anything and know you care.
"Bouba" kind of sounds like "bubble" so maybe that's another reason they chose it for the round, blue shape
And kiki has sounds similar to cactus, which has pointy spikes. I might be stretching it a bit far here though
You missed the point, this works across languages. Not just english.
@@rhubarbeque Maybe there's a reason why "b" "u" "a" "o" are round letters while "k" "t" "i" are sharp pointy letters.
nah bouba means.....
nevermind
I just think that bouba sounds round and kiki sounds pointy
what they think we think: the word that sounds like the sharpest shape is kiki because of vowels and...
what we really think: k letter is sharp yes
Knife
Yea and it just feels right for some reason
I swear you've already done this one.
SciShow Psych covered this 3 weeks ago.
Right? I swear I saw this, like, *years* ago, by Tom.
@@jubbetje4278 That's where I saw it! It was driving me crazy during the whole video!
I clicked on it thinking the same and that maybe it was a reupload. Guess I've just seen it other places (I know QI did it). Still a good video.
Same!! It's driving me crazy lmao
"That is a lot of citations"
Maybe for a youtube video
Tbh all the citations throughout the video would be a decent amount of references for such a short work, even if it was a paper.
As someone who wrote their thesis last year, I approve this comment
This spent a full day in my recommended because I thought it was an old video I had already seen
SAME
I swear I've seen this video before
This channel keeps answering questions I never had nor ever will, and I love it.
i love linguistics. all the language related questions are almost always about humanity, how we think how we feel. this is awesome. and yes, sounds and shapes and even genders has some sort of correlation.
nice playlist tom, thanks 👍
I thought this was gonna be another "Yanny or Laurel" thing again
What the hell is your pfp
Laurel gang
Team Yaurel OUH
main takeaway: all cavemen were round.
of course kirby what else would they be shaped like?
@@orbismworldbuilding8428 dinosaurs
because they said unga bunga?
@@orbismworldbuilding8428 he's buff kirby you *stupid*
as a kid i also sorted 1-20 to which one looks more mascule and which looks more feminine, i recently talked about this with my friends and they didnt understand how "one" looks more mascule and 2 rather elegant and femine. i tried to explain it to them but failed XD
1: feminine
2: masculine
3: feminine
4: M
5: F
6: F
7: M
8: M
9: M
10: F
11: M
12: F
13: M
14: M
15: F
16: F
17: M
18: M
19: F
20: M
this is REALLY interesting from an irish perspective (i do not know irish gaelic i have just been reading up on it for pronunciation and basic grammar) because vowels are sorted into two categories, broad and slender. the broad vowels are a, o, u. the slender vowels are e, i. and i just a few days ago i was thinking that it just made SENSE that they were divided like that and now this video put everything together for me
Halfway through I was like "HEYYY WHERE'S THE SYNESTHESIA ASPECT" and Tom didn't disappoint. Purely based on the shown colors I would have arranged them the other way around tbh
“R is one of the most menacing of sounds. That’s why they call it murder not ‘muckduck’.” -Dwight K. Schrute
Doesn't work with the modern English R anymore, but he's still right about most languages. In modern English, K is a more menacing sound than R.
What about the Spanish trilled R? The one that most English-speaking people have trouble pronouncing?
@@TheDankBoi69 That's how murder gets romanticized.
Oh, DwighHt (sorry not sorry for the typo)...
@@TheDankBoi69I literally can't say it at all
Gonna guess in advance:
Bouba is the blue one because the blue one looks bouncy and bubbly, which comes off the tongue as such as well.
Kiki on the contrary has a way sharper and rougher sound to itself, fitting the pointy ends.
@@a-ha4940 no they aren't
@@a-ha4940 did you watch the video?
@@a-ha4940 You didn't watch the whole video, did you?
Very interesting! This sort of reminds me of how Japanese uses onomatopoeia, specifically 擬態語 (gitaigo) and 擬情語(gijyougo), both of which are categories of words that describe more abstract states or means. Pikapika and kirakira describe sparkling or glistening, sorosoro and noronoro describe slowness and sluggishness, similar to how you describe the “universal” linguistic patterns.
Also, "Pikapika" is what Ash's Pikachu says in the Pokemon anime.
@@glowstonelovepad9294 "Pika" is quite exactly is the word for a flash of light - as in that of lightning. Hence 'pikapika!"
You seem to know some Japanese. (More than me!! But I try.) if so: すみません私の日本語!
@@glowstonelovepad9294 actually, Pikachu's name is a combination of two Japanese Onomatopoeia:
Pikapika (electric spark sounds)
Chuchu (mouse sounds)
Hence ピカチゥ (If I had to translate it, I would choose 'electric mouse' or something vaguely in that direction)
PIKI PIKI PIIMAN
I hate to admit I recognize this too because of One Piece with the Glint-Glint Fruit (Pika Pika no mi) and the Slow-Slow Fruit (Noro Noro no mi)
Also, "PIKA PIKA PIKARARARARA!!"
This reminds me of the Monty Python sketch about 'tinny' and 'woody' words!
Caribou!
Gorn
Intercourse
Stew
that rolled through my head exactly the moment I rolled across this comment.
Drake in the studio: "Bouba do you love me...."
"Nah producer this don't sound right"
Producer: "ok let's go for the other one"
2:42 booba
Persona 5 players: "Ha, I knew that, of course."
I knew I saw it before
+1 Knowledge
I was looking for this comment.
HEY! Listen Up!
@@renamamiya5997 Oh, hey there, my dude. We were talking about your game.
This has also been called "phonosthematics." In English the syllable "ump" is associated with low, round, heavy, or malleable things: e.g. lump, bump, dump, sump.
Thankyou for gracing me with this new word I can use to further google the hell about this topic and examine parallels with synaesthesia
Oompf
As an academic, I can't tell you how pleased I am to see you referencing your material.
Watching this at 2 AM with headphones, the Cave soundeffect nearly gave me a hear tattack holy moly
I was a test subject in a study about this phenomenon! The researcher was Japanese and they were trying to find this sort of connection with sensations of touch - it was really cool and I got to drink some delicious tea, 10/10
Kiki,
are you bouba,
no you're pointy,
say you'll never ever try to confuse me
cause I see ya,
and I know ya,
regardless of my language
Nice
Nice
Nice
Very Nice
Nice
Having seen the thumbnail I had already associated Kiki with the sharp shape and Bouba with the rounded one. I'm not going to lie and try to be one of the "different" people, I absolutely believe in a link between phonemes and shapes, it's also something I've thought about before. Glad to see it isn't just me.
Oh so I'm not insane. My friends were confused when I said I can categorize words as open, soft, hard, sharp, crisp, round, narrow, etc
My 200+ hours on persona 5 were for this very moment.
Vanilla or Royal tho?
@@gab_v250 each.
It’s a simple problem really:
A kiki is a party for calming all your nerves
it´s weird, I strongly believe that Tom has already uploaded this video before; some years ago
I thought the same thing.
Mandela effect confirmed?!
deja vu
@@surf124 I've just been in this place before
@@kori228 higher on the street
Also, it happens to be that in multiple linguistic families, "bouba" is used for a similar purpose as in the English language. You might or might not know that if you are bilingual. When one claims that people would refer to rounded things as "bouba" because of its implementation in one's language, it is quite likely the other way round and "bouba" is implemented after being round.
0:20 "Wow, that is... that is a lot of citations."
That may be - but do Gary, Chris and Matt also agree that there is no more Citation Needed? :-)
As somebody who recently played through Persona 5, the answer's clearly B.
...Wait
Kiki has sharper letters and the shape itself is sharper.
Bouba has rounder letters and the shape was round.
The shape most associated with Kiki was also red (not sure if the colors were in the studies), something that's associated with harshness and anger. While the one usually labeled Bouba is blue, a feeling associated with calmness and sadness (again, not sure if the colors were in the studies).
That's the way I see it and how I label things.
Fun fact: NDs don’t always correlate the names and shapes. I always liked the blue one as Kiki and the red one as Bouba.
Ironically, it's my synaesthesia that makes the Kiki / Bouba test difficult for me, because the colours of the shapes don't match the colours I associate with the words.
Kiki = dark green, light blue, dark green, light blue. So only a green and / or blue shape would go with that name.
Bouba = dark bluish green, orangey yellow, dusky pink, dark bluish green, bold red. So it would need to be a multicoloured shape to fit that name.
But it's usually presented with the spiky shape in red, which doesn't really go with either of the names but is closer to Bouba because at least that has one red letter in it (A), and the paint splatter in blue, which is a bit more like Kiki because that has two blue letters in it (I).
So my brain is trying to go both ways at once - it associates the "sharpness" of the Kiki sound with the spiky shape, but the colours of Kiki kinda with the paint splatter; and associates the "roundness" of the Bouba sound with the paint splatter, but the colours of Bouba not really with either of them but slightly more with the spiky shape.
Synaesthesia is cool, but it really doesn't let things be simple.
Kiki is also 1, 3, 7, 9, 11, 13, .... and vice versa buba is 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, ...
This is fascinating and makes a weird kind of sense to my non-synaesthesia brain.
Thanks for sharing!
Just out of curiosity, does Tom's shirt scream "aaaaa" to you?
@@wolframstahl1263 I also have synesthesia and to me his shirt is the colour of August
This is kinda trippy
Thank you for saying "raises the question" and not "begs the question", Tom
Can you explain?
@@leavewe "Begging the question" is the name of a logical fallacy in which the speaker is assuming the premise under examination is true. It doesn't mean "raises the question" like most people use it. Although academic linguists usually assert that under descriptivism it is perfectly fine to now use "begs the question" as people have been using it in that context for so long now, its meaning is understood although technically incorrect.
@@236Doodad Like, literally?
@@236Doodad phrases/words often change their meaning to how society uses them
Why on Earth is reasoning in a circle called "begging the question" though?
I remember this from an episode of QI.
I knew I had seen it somewhere before, and thought it was actually an old Tom Scott video!
What is QI?
@@tubica_de Quite Interesting, a TV show in the UK about trivia where they trick the guests into saying trivia that's common but actually wrong (but actually not wrong, sometimes the producers are just assholes)
just search for it on youtube, it's a lot of fun
Tubica
QI was a bit like Citation Needed.
@@mattyphilpotts3745 You might have seen it in VS Ramachandran's TED talk.
Bouba and Kiki are both names of songs from the country Cameroon in Africa. Bouba is by Dady Mimbo and Kiki is by Blick Bassy.