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Comment by profsummergig | Hacker News Reader

Is 'bouba' pronounced 'bowba', 'bohba', or 'booba'? And why isn't it spelled like that instead?

I was taught it was "BOW-ba" or "BOH-ba", but AI actually linked a number of studies that seems to confirm it is supposed to be and usually is "BOO-ba" (i.e. bulging eyes Pepe) in experiments. I don't personally think either pronunciation would change the results though.

I didn't choose the wug life, the wug life chose me.

Page 154 for the uninitiated: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/243750735_The_Child...

The strange spelling is partly intentional to make sure that people read it as a very fake word with no known definition. In English bow, boba, boob are all real words.

The first time I heard of this effect like two decades ago, it was using the words "takete" and "maluma".

Aside from this bouba question, Kiki is a name. I've also wondered why these two words are used so often when talking about the effect, when they're both much more easily associated with something than takete/maluma.

In this case I think it is just a popularity contest. Takete/Maluma were the first version of the study in the 1920s. Kiki/Bouba replicated the study in the 2000s. So recency bias plus "simpler" fake words can explain some of the popularity.

Because English is the odd one out with the non-obvious mapping of sounds to character.

Definitely. Something more onomatopoeiac like Chinese would be much clearer.

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