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.

The study tested newborns on two sets of vowel sounds -- 17 native language sounds and 17 foreign language sounds, said Kuhl. The researchers tested the babies' interest in the vowel sounds based on ...

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 ...