Why do words sound funny when repeated?
Moment of Um
American Public Media
4.4 • 1.5K Ratings
🗓️ 1 February 2024
⏱️ 4 minutes
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Summary
Have you ever noticed that when you say the same word over and over, it starts to sound funny? It’s like the word loses its meaning and just becomes weird, disconnected sounds. One of our listeners wanted to know why, and we went to linguist Shohini Battasali for the answer.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | From the brains behind brains on, this is the moment of um. |
| 0:06.0 | Answering those questions that make you go. The moment of them comes to you from APM Studios. I'm Ruby Guthrie. Do you have a favorite word? I'm not necessarily talking about a word that means something that you love, but a word you like just because of how it sounds. |
| 0:38.0 | Aurora is really beautiful. Here's another one, Serenty. |
| 0:44.0 | Or, how about quiddage? |
| 0:47.0 | There are just so many good sounds in that word. |
| 0:50.0 | Quidditch. |
| 0:51.0 | Quidditch. |
| 0:52.0 | Quidditch. Quidditch. |
| 0:54.3 | Quidditch. |
| 0:55.0 | Quidditch. Quidditch. |
| 0:56.0 | Whenever I repeat a word though, I notice that it just starts to sound weird. |
| 1:01.0 | Have you ever noticed that? |
| 1:03.0 | Hello, my name is Emilia and I am from Wales. |
| 1:07.0 | My question is, why do words sound funny when you keep repeating them. Words consist of different sounds and our brain mapped these sounds to different meanings and concepts. |
| 1:21.0 | So for example, when you hear the word word book it maps it not to the idea of a book. |
| 1:27.2 | Hi I'm Shihini Pardisale. I'm a postdoctoral researcher in linguistics at the University of Maryland. |
| 1:35.0 | So I study how our brains help us understand language. |
| 1:38.0 | So when you keep repeating the word book continuously, |
| 1:41.0 | you actually end up focusing on the sounds of the words itself like |
| 1:44.8 | B. U. K. And those sounds itself have nothing really to do with the meaning of book. |
| 1:50.0 | B. U. K. K. So after a while what happens is that you kind of lose the meaning and it kind of ends up sounding funny to you. |
| 1:57.6 | Per ukk. So some people have said that this has to do with your brain kind of getting tired it's a kind of |
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