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What a Shape Sounds Like

One of these shapes is a kiki. Th e other is a bouba. Which do you think is which? Why?

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answer

Th e fi rst is the bouba, the second the kiki, right?While there is, of course, no ‘right’ answer, this is the answer

generally given by around per cent of participants. Somehow, the bou sound just feels rounded, while the ki sound feels sharp and jagged.

Where do these feelings come from? Perhaps we are making as-sociations with familiar English words. Bouba sounds a little like ‘balloon’ (or even – Ooh, Matron! - ‘booby’), while kiki sounds al-most exactly like ‘key, key’, and keys do tend to be rather angular (at least, at the business end). Or maybe the associations come from writing? Th e ou sound of bouba is written with rounded let-ters, while the k of kiki is angular.

While these associations are probably playing some small role in this specifi c example, they don’t tell the whole story. For one thing, we still get the eff ect if we replace them with other words that don’t sound particularly like any real English words (e.g., which is the takete and which is the maluma?). For another, we still get the eff ect if we test speakers of other languages with very diff erent vocabulary and written scripts to English (e.g, Swahili, Bantu and Tamil), or even two-year-old children, who have not yet learned to read at all.

So why do so many languages share these same sound–shape correspondences? Th ink about the shape of your mouth when you produce these sounds: a big, open, round mouth for bouba versus a small opening with your lips stretched thinly for kiki. One popular theory, then, is that the bouba/kiki eff ect is caused by connections in the brain between areas that process visual input – including both shapes on the printed page and shapes formed by speakers’ lips – and areas that are responsible for perceiving and producing speech sounds. Words like bouba literally ‘feel’ round, because you can feel your lips forming a round shape when you say them.

We see these types of eff ect with some real English words too. For example, words such as large, huge and enormous involve open-ing wide our lips or entire mouths, whereas little, tiny, mini, petite,

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itsy-bitsy, teenie-weenie (yellow polka-dot bikini) involve stretching our lips to make a tiny gap. Th is may be one reason why retail-ers prefer prices that end in . When you say, for example, ‘one ninety-nine’, you are not only making these tiny sounds, but even saying the word ‘teenie’ (well, almost), as opposed to producing a big, booming TWO pounds.

Could there be links between other sensory modalities? If shapes have sounds, can they have tastes too? . . .

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