Eight, Ocho, Acht Most Fascinating Language Discoveries of 2024
This year scientists found universal language for pain, tracked why some words go extinct, developed mind-reading brain-to-speech technology, and more
By Allison Parshall for Scientific American
Humans have been speaking some form of language for tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of years. Yet linguists, psychologists and historians are constantly making new discoveries about the ways we communicate with one another. Linguists are tracking the new terms we invent for our modern lives while archeologists search for the lost history of languages past and neuroscientists test new technology that could allow us to bypass speech entirely and communicate straight from our brain. From the oldest alphabets to mind-reading implants, here are some of the coolest things we learned about language in 2024.
The “Ow” Factor
How do you say “ouch” in languages around the world? If you pick a random language, odds are that this pain-expressing word involves the vowel sound “ah” or sounds made by combining it with other vowels, such as “ow” or “ai.” Researchers discovered this hidden commonality by studying pain words across 131 languages. They suspect the trend might come from involuntary sounds humans make to express pain—which are also more likely to contain that “ah” vowel.
The world around us often shapes the sounds of our language, though many of these effects are subtle. For example, there’s the classic bouba-kiki effect, where people are more likely to call a rounded object “bouba” and a spiked one “kiki.” And researchers also recently proved that people around the world are more likely to associate the trilled “R” sound with roughness and the “L” sound with smoothness.
Survival of the Fittest
Humans, like all animals, evolve over time—as do the languages we speak. But why do some words survive millennia, whereas others might go extinct within a few generations? To help find out, researchers orchestrated a giant game of “telephone” with thousands of English speakers. Participants read stories, then rewrote them for other participants to read, and researchers looked for patterns in the words that survived or were lost.
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