Do Pain and Joy Have a Universal Language?

Science Quickly

Scientific American

Science

4.3 • 1.4K Ratings

🗓️ 17 January 2025

⏱️ 18 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Ouch! Ah! Aïe! The words we use when we stub our toe or receive a pinch may point to a common way to express pain across languages. Associate news editor Allison Parshall explores what linguistic commonalities in expressions of pain and joy might mean for our shared biology. Plus, Parshall and host Rachel Feltman chat about onomatopoeias, the “bouba-kiki” effect and linguistic news you may have missed in 2024. Recommended reading: Ouch! Linguists Find Universal Language for Pain How Our Thoughts Shape the Way Spoken Words Evolve My Synesthesia Transforms Speech into Text I ‘See’ in My Head Eight, Ocho, Acht Most Fascinating Language Discoveries of 2024 E-mail us at [email protected] if you have any questions, comments or ideas for stories we should cover! Discover something new every day: subscribe to Scientific American and sign up for Today in Science, our daily newsletter. Science Quickly is produced by Rachel Feltman, Fonda Mwangi, Kelso Harper, Madison Goldberg and Jeff DelViscio. This episode was hosted by Rachel Feltman with guest Allison Parshall. Our show is edited by Fonda Mwangi with fact-checking by Emily Makowski, Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck. The theme music was composed by Dominic Smith. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	What kind of weekend are you in the mood for?
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0:11.0	drama and fine dining with The Bear,
0:13.0	or a journey back to feudal Japan with Shogun.
0:17.0	January weekends just got better with Disney Plus.
0:20.0	Tap the banner to learn more. 18 plus subscription required. Learn better with Disney Plus. Tap the banner to learn more.
0:22.1	18 plus subscription required.
0:24.0	Learn more at Disneyplus.com.
0:29.6	If you stubbed your toe right now, what sound would you make?
0:33.7	According to linguists, the chances are pretty good that your answer would be surprisingly similar to one given by someone on the other side of the planet, even if you speak totally different languages.
0:44.8	For Scientific American, I'm Rachel Feltman. I'm here today with our friend Alison Partial, an associate news editor at Scientific American, who often covers biology, health, technology, and physics.
0:55.7	She recently wrote about a study that focused on the words humans used to express pain
1:00.2	and the wild similarities between those exclamations around the world.
1:09.0	Allison, thanks for coming on to chat.
1:11.3	Hopefully it won't be too painful.
1:15.1	Ouch, that's all I have to say.
1:17.2	So why are linguists talking about pain?
1:20.9	Well, linguists are talking about everything always.
1:22.5	Talking about talking.
1:23.4	But linguists are talking about pain because the words that we use to express it might actually
1:28.8	tell us something about our shared biology and the evolution of kind of language in general.
	...

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