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You know how a dog goes "mung mung" and a cow goes "bu"?
你知道狗“蒙蒙”叫，而牛叫“哺”吗？
Sure, that's pretty obvious — unless you didn't grow up in Korea or Hungary, where "woof" and "moo" may raise an eyebrow.
当然，这是显而易见的，除非你不是在韩国或匈牙利长大的，在那里“呜呜”和“哞哞”可能会让人大吃一惊。
Since Ancient Greece, we've been trying to figure out
从古希腊开始，我们就一直试图弄清楚
why people feel that some words just sound like the thing they refer to that is, why onomatopoeias exist.
为什么人们觉得有些词听起来像他们所指的东西，那就是为什么有拟声词存在。
Like, does this only happen because of the cultures they were raised in, like with those animal sounds?
比如，这仅仅是因为他们所处的文化，比如动物的声音？
Or is there something more fundamental?
还是有更本质的东西？
Well, science says maybe there is something fundamental here.
好吧，科学上说也许存在一些本质的东西。
And it could even go back to the beginning of language itself.
甚至可以追溯到语言本身的起源。
One famous study about all this was published in 1929,
关于这些内容的一项著名研究发表于1929年，
when German psychologist Wolfgang Köhler described what's now known as the bouba/kiki effect.
当时德国心理学家沃尔夫冈·科勒描述了现在人们所知的波巴/奇奇效应。
Here's how it works.
以下是该效应的原理。
First, you show people — specifically, hearing folks — a lumpy shape and a jagged shape,
首先，你让人们，特别是听力正常的人，看一个块状和锯齿状的形状。
and you tell them that, in Martian, one of those shapes is called "bouba" and the other is called "kiki."
然后告诉他们，在火星语中，其中一个形状叫“波巴”，另一个叫“奇奇”
And multiple experiments show that on average, 95% of people guess that "bouba" is the lumpy one and "kiki" refers to the spiky one.
多个实验表明，平均来说，95%的人猜测“波巴”是块状，“奇奇”是尖形。
Almost a century later, we know this effect works across languages and cultures.
差不多一个世纪后，我们知道这种效应在不同的语言和文化中都起作用。
And it looks like this association is based on the sounds of the words, too, more than any similarity in the letters' shapes.
看起来这种联系也基于单词的发音，而不是字母形状的相似性。
We know this because research shows that the bouba/kiki effect happens no matter what writing system you grew up with,
我们之所以知道这一点，是因为研究表明，无论你是在什么样的写作体系中长大，
and even in cultures without a written language.
甚至在没有书面语言的文化中，都会发生波巴/奇奇效应。
Researchers have also found it works just as well in infants as young as four months old,
研究人员还发现，这种方法同样适用于4个月大的婴儿，
who mostly haven't had time to learn to read, what with their busy schedules.
他们大多还没学习阅读，因为他们的事情很多。
So it turns out that word lumpiness isn't subjective.
所以“块状”这个词不是主观的。
And neuroscientific research also shows that this is a completely unconscious process.
而神经科学研究也表明，这是一个完全无意识的过程。
So… what causes this connection?
那是什么导致了这种联系？
There are a handful of ideas.
存在一些理念。
On the cognitive and linguistic side, some studies suggest this word-sound matching is based on the way people physically pronounce the words.
在认知和语言方面，一些研究表明，这种词—音匹配基于人们实际发音的方式。
Like, the movement of someone's lips and tongue in some vowels maps onto the more rounded shape associated with "bouba" in the experiments.
例如，在实验中，某人的嘴唇和舌头发某些元音时的移动映射到与“波巴”相关的更圆的形状上。
Other research shows that the bouba/kiki effect may actually be associated with the basic acoustic features of the sounds
其他研究表明，波巴/奇奇效应实际上可能与组成这些单词声音的基本声学特征有关，
that make up those words like their amplitude and frequency.
比如它们的振幅和频率。
Meanwhile, on the brain side, scientists believe that bouba/kiki is an example of cross-modal perception.
同时，在大脑方面，科学家认为波巴/奇奇效应是跨模态感知的一个例子。
That's when information from different senses is combined to form one coherent idea.
也就是说，来自不同感官的信息结合在一起，形成连贯的想法。
One basic example is how you can still recognize what an object is through smell or touch even without the sense of sight.
一个基本的例子是，即使没有视觉，仍然可以通过嗅觉或触觉识别物体。
Another famous example is the McGurk effect.
另一个著名的例子是麦格克效应。
That's when someone will hear the same speech sounds differently, based on how the person saying them is moving their lips.
也就是说，根据说话者移动嘴唇的方式，一个人听到同一个演讲时的声音会有所不同。
It happens because the brain is using multiple senses to understand what's going on
这是因为大脑使用多种感官来理解发生了什么，
like how someone uses sight and hearing to decide which shape is bouba or kiki.
比如人们如何利用视觉和听觉来决定波巴或奇奇。
But as far as what causes this neurologically — we don't know.
但是什么导致了这种神经方面的运动，我们还不清楚。
Hypotheses point to the angular gyrus and the fusiform gyrus,
假设指向角形脑回和梭状回，
which are structures in the brain responsible for things like understanding metaphors and integrating multiple sensory inputs.
这是大脑中负责理解隐喻和整合多种感觉输入的结构。
And experiments have shown that people with damage to those parts of the brain don't seem to experience the bouba/kiki effect anymore.
实验表明，大脑这些部位受损的人似乎再也没有经历过“波巴/奇奇效应”。
Meanwhile, the reverse can be seen in synesthesia,
同时，在联觉中可以看到相反的情况，
where one type of sensory input activates another in a much more intense way than in run of the mill cross-modal perception.
一种感官输入比普通的跨模态感知能强烈地激活另一种。
For example, in grapheme-color synesthesia, people literally see letters in certain colors.
例如，在字形—颜色联觉中，人们从字面上看到特定颜色的字母。
So "A" may be bright blue, "B" may be chartreuse, and so on.
所以“A”可能是亮蓝色，“B”可能是黄褐色，以此类推。
At least some people with synesthesia have more neural connections in the fusiform gyrus,
至少一些有联觉的人在梭状回有更多的神经联系，而且在波巴/奇奇效应实验中，
and they also tend to associate sounds and shapes more strongly in bouba/kiki experiments.
他们也倾向于把声音和形状联系得更紧密。
Still, the jury is officially out.
不过，评判团已经正式出局。
The fascinating thing is, though, some scientists believe that cross-modal perception is more than a way to navigate the world.
不过，有趣的是，一些科学家认为，跨模态感知不仅是一种导航世界的方式。
They think this could be the cognitive process that made it possible for us to develop language in the first place.
他们认为这可能是一个认知过程，使我们有可能先发展语言。
Essentially, some scientists point to these fundamental sound-shape mappings things like "kiki" equals "pointy"
本质上，一些科学家指出这些基本的音形映射，比如“奇奇”等于“带尖的”，
as the remnants of the very beginnings of language.
这是语言起源的残余物。
They think that at some point, humans recognized that some sounds made other humans think of certain shapes.
他们认为在某个时刻，人类认识到某些声音使其他人想到某些形状。
And then, that idea gradually expanded, until we had languages that could call up any type of mental image.
然后，这个想法逐渐扩大，直到我们有了能够唤起任何类型的心理意象的语言。
There are other ideas, of course, but this is about as likely as any other!
当然，还有其他的理念，但这和其他想法一样存在可能！
Now, in general, not all word-sound associations are objective.
现在，一般来说，并不是所有的字音联想都是客观的。
Just like with "woof woof" versus "mung mung," most of them are cultural.
就像“呜呜”和“蒙蒙”一样，大多数都是文化层面上的。
For example, Japanese has multiple words that express the sounds of actions, objects, or feelings
例如，日语中有多个词表达动作、物体或感觉的声音，
that may not sound like anything in another culture.
这些声音在另一种文化中可能与任何声音都不同。
Like, "guzu guzu" is the sound of procrastination,
就像“咕咕咕咕”是拖延的声音，
"peko peko" is the sound of being hungry, and so on.
“peko peko”是饥饿的声音，等等。
As another example, English has multiple words that have a negative connotation and all start with a "sl" sound, like slack, slouch, and sludge.
另一个例子是，英语中有多个词的含义都是否定的，而且都以“sl”开头，比如slack、slooch和slude。
But those less common, hard-wired cross-modal connections like bouba and kiki are where a lot of exciting research is taking place.
但是像波巴和奇奇这样不太常见的跨模态连接，是许多令人兴奋的研究正在考察的内容。
Scientists have already discovered similar associations between speech sounds and the size of objects and even taste.
科学家们已经发现了语音与物体大小甚至味道之间的相似联系。
And the more we learn about the mechanics of cross-modal perception, the closer we get to revealing the origins of language and human cognition.
我们对跨模态感知机制了解得越多，就越接近于揭示语言和人类认知的起源。
If all this talk about language has gotten you wanting to learn a new one, you might be interested in Babbel.
如果这些关于语言的话题让你想学一门新的语言，你可能会对Babbel感兴趣。
It's an app that helps you learn a new language and use it in real-world situations.
这是一款帮助你学习新语言并在现实生活中使用的应用。
The lessons are specifically designed to take into account your native language,
课程是在设计时考虑到你的母语，
and the app also features personalized review sessions for you.
应用还为你提供个性化的复习课程。
So after as little as five hours of practice, you'll be ready to ask for directions, order at a restaurant, or just navigate around.
因此，只要经过5个小时的练习，你就可以问路、在餐厅点菜，或者四处溜达。
Right now, Babbel offers 14 languages, including Russian, German, Spanish, Portuguese, and more.
现在，Babbel提供14种语言，包括俄语、德语、西班牙语、葡萄牙语等。
And as a SciShow viewer, you can get 50% off a six-month subscription.
作为科学秀的观众，你订阅六个月可以享受五折优惠。
So if you want to check it out, you can download Babbel by clicking the link in the description below.
因此，如果你想查询以下，可以通过单击下面描述中的链接下载Babbel。
