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#659 Nick Chater & Morten Christiansen - The Language Game; Language as a Game of Charades

The Dissenter

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Is There a Relationship Between Sounds and Meaning?

Study looked at 6,000 different languages and dialects across the world. Found relationships between sounds and meanings that show up again and again. If a language has concept for color red then it's more likely than not that word has an R sound in it. But on the other hand, every language of the world expresses the concept of dog with a kind of woof sound. This makes disambiguating what people mean very difficult.

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