Plato's dialogue Cratylus begins with a debate. Socrates is asked whether the sounds of words are simply arbitrary conventions, as Hermogenes suggests, or if sounds are reflective in some way of their ...

Certainly, you might find related words within a language that sound alike – think glance, glimmer and glare in English, which all have to do with vision and begin with a “gl.” But that doesn’t mean ...

Psychologist Greg Simpson was studying Korean with the help of a graduate student, a Korean native, when a thought struck him. “You don’t have spelling bees, do you?” he asked her. He had to explain ...

Where you grew up may influence how you speak. High in the mountains, languages contain short bursts of sound, says a new study. Why? Maybe cliff dwellers needed to keep their throats from drying out.

English bursts with consonants. We have words that string one after another, like angst, diphthong and catchphrase. But other languages keep more vowels and open sounds. And that variability might be ...