For decades, linguists have believed that the words we use are entirely arbitrary—mere sounds assigned to meanings by cultural convention.
But what if that assumption is wrong?
A groundbreaking study analyzing over 6,000 languages suggests that certain sounds are universally linked to specific meanings, hinting at a hidden linguistic code shared across humanity.
This revelation challenges one of the fundamental principles of modern linguistics and raises intriguing questions about the origins of human speech.
Could it be that language isn’t as random as we thought? That deep within the way we communicate, a universal pattern has been shaping words for centuries?
A Universal Pattern in Language?
An international team of researchers, including linguists, cognitive scientists, and physicists, set out to examine whether commonalities exist across the world’s languages.
Their study, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, analyzed the sounds used in everyday words—such as ‘dog,’ ‘water,’ ‘tooth,’ and ‘you’—across 62% of all languages spoken today.
What they found was astonishing. Despite the vast differences between languages, certain sounds appear repeatedly in words with the same meanings. For instance:
- The word for “nose” often contains a “neh” or “oo” sound.
- “Red” and “round” tend to have an “r” sound.
- Body parts are particularly likely to share phonetic similarities across languages.
This challenges the long-standing belief that the sounds of words and their meanings are completely arbitrary.
Instead, it suggests that humans may have an innate way of associating certain sounds with specific objects and concepts.
Flipping the Script on Linguistics
For more than a century, the dominant view in linguistic theory has been that words are arbitrary symbols, as famously proposed by Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure.
Under this model, the word “dog” has no intrinsic connection to the animal—it’s just a label we happen to agree upon in English.
But this new research presents strong evidence against that idea.
The presence of sound-meaning correlations across unrelated languages suggests a deeper, perhaps biological, reason why certain sounds emerge in certain words.
As cognitive psychologist Morten H. Christiansen from Cornell University explains:
“These sound symbolic patterns show up again and again across the world, independent of geography or linguistic lineage.
There seems to be something about the human condition that leads to these patterns. We don’t know what it is, but we know it’s there.”
This discovery doesn’t mean that all words follow these universal rules.
English, for example, is often an outlier, deviating from the patterns found in many other languages.
But the statistical relationships in thousands of words across global languages suggest that human speech may not be as arbitrary as we once believed.
Why Do These Patterns Exist?
One possible explanation is that these commonalities are remnants of an ancient “protolanguage” spoken by early humans.
If early human ancestors relied on sound symbolism to communicate basic ideas, some of these connections may have persisted across generations, even as languages evolved into their distinct modern forms.
However, the research team believes that a more likely explanation lies in human biology and cognition.
The way our brains process sounds, the way we produce speech, and even the way infants learn language may all contribute to the universal tendencies seen in the study.
“Perhaps these signals help nudge children into acquiring language,” says Christiansen. “
Likely it has something to do with the human mind or brain, our ways of interacting, or signals we use when we learn or process language.”
Why This Matters
The implications of this study are profound.
If language is shaped by universal cognitive and biological principles, it could reshape how we teach languages, understand linguistic evolution, and even develop artificial intelligence capable of more natural speech processing.
Furthermore, this research could help bridge gaps between languages, providing new tools for translation and communication.
If certain words naturally share sounds across languages, could we use this knowledge to make learning a new language easier?
A Paradigm Shift in Linguistics?
Not everyone in the linguistic community is ready to abandon the traditional view of language as arbitrary.
As cognitive psychologist Jaime Reilly from Temple University points out:
“Most models for how words enter our lexicon assume that sound tells us nothing about meaning.
This paper challenges that assumption and could be a very important study in shifting our understanding of language.”
Linguistics is at a crossroads. With more studies like this one, we may soon discover that language isn’t just a social construct, but a deep, biological feature of what makes us human.
For now, one thing is clear: the sounds we use may reveal more about our shared human experience than we ever imagined.
