Sound Symbolism

Published: July 2025

by Aryaman Aggarwal

Phonosemantics, a facet of linguistics and phonetics, centers on the perception of sounds and the intuitive associations they evoke with objects, sensations, and meanings.

Fascinated by the possibility that sounds can convey meaning independently of learned language, I’ve created a simple, interactive linguistic experiment. Participants are randomly shown five unfamiliar words and five corresponding meanings and asked to pair them. The words may come from natural languages or be entirely fictional.

I hypothesize that even without knowledge of a specific language, participants will infer meaning at a rate greater than chance, guided purely by the phonological characteristics of the words and the perceived qualities of the concepts they represent.

To investigate further, the experiment also tests whether participants respond differently when presented with images rather than English text.

The full results of this study will be published in due course. If you’d like to take part, simply play the game below. Thank you.