Made-up words like “clisious” and “smanious” are easier to remember when they sound beautiful. Could the feel of a word shape how we learn languages, sell products and even how languages evolve? — Photo: Julian Stratenschulte/dpa
Words with a pleasant sound are easier to remember, a study by the University of Vienna has found.
Invented words like "clisious", "smanious" and "drikious" were presented to around 100 English-speaking participants to test how sound alone, independent of meaning, influences perception.
They also examined whether the beauty of sounds affects how easily words can be learned. The 100 participants viewed different pretend words which were designed to be "beautiful", "neutral" or "not beautiful".
First they were asked to learn and memorize the words, later to recall them, and finally to rate how beautiful they found them.
"We found that the words that participants remembered best were also the ones they rated as most beautiful," said study leader Theresa Matzinger. The results point to a close relationship between memorability and what is known as euphony, or the beauty of sound.
Could the feel of a word shape how we learn languages, sell products and even how languages evolve? — Photo: Britta Pedersen/dpa
"Whether we remember things better because we find them beautiful or find them beautiful because we can remember them better remains to be seen," said the University of Vienna lecturer, whose study was published in the journal PLOS One.
The link between aesthetic perception and the learnability of language could affect foreign language learning, marketing strategies and language change across generations.
"Certain sound patterns may persist in languages because they sound pleasant, while others may disappear because we find them less appealing," Matzinger said. – dpa
