A swear word is like a linguistic punch in the nose. Virtually every language and culture has them—and virtually every language and culture formally disapproves of them. But that doesn’t stop them ...

Earlier today, we asked for help coming up with a wordfor that thing where a word is innocent in its native language, but sounds like a dirty word to foreign speakers. And not only did we come up with ...

Ideophones, or words that sound like what they mean—words whose sound evokes the sensory experience they describe, like swish or twinkle—are easier to learn than other words, a new study finds. The ...

We’ve all experienced how certain sounds can grate on our nerves, such as the noise made by dragging your fingernails across a blackboard (Getty/iStock) During the pandemic, many of us have felt our ...

When we have conscious thoughts, we can often hear a voice inside our heads – now new research is revealing why. Why do we include the sounds of words in our thoughts when we think without speaking?

Learning English can be tricky when words sound the same but mean completely different things. In this video, Claire explains ...