5 ms·
I have always thought this association is partly from some intuition we have about the mechanical and acoustic properties of hypothetical things that would have
by ComplexSystems 2y ago
I 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.
- lqet 2y agoI distinctly remember trying to "read" sentences as a small child by investigating the shape of the letters. For example, if a letter looked friendly, like like A or C, I assumed a nice message. If the letters looked serious or grave, like T, E, K or W, I assumed a bad message. If a letter looked soft like B or P or O, I assumed the sentence was about something soft, etc.
- caf 2y agoIt seems to me that the world is replete with rounded, hard objects (eg stones) and soft, jagged objects (eg blades of grass)?
- JyB 2y agoCan’t the bouba/kiki effect be replicated in tribes that do not interact with glass/metals? Or barely