Discussing salty snacks with @fbisnath.bsky.social, concluding that they can be categorized in two-dimensional bouba–kiki space. #iconicity #linguistics
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We actually ran an experiment on how people would name things like mashed potatoes/french fries, fish stew/breaded fish etc and the names all followed bouba/kiki patterns, so YES (we also added water/sparkling water, I bet you all know which is which)
I would argue for a third dimension - bouba/kiki taste: e.g. olives, pickles, salt and vinegar chips = Kiki and string cheese, cheese puffs, plain chips, etc. = bouba
It's purely because of a mathematical background, but there's something unsettling about the way kiki is positive on the x-axis but negative on the y-axis (and thus the two quadrants I intuitively expect to be kiki/kiki and bouba/bouba are shifted)
Sorry! 🙃 I actually put kiki+kiki as top right first, but flipped it to i) match the xkcd vertical axis (see quoted) and ii) follow my preferred linguistic order bouba–kiki left to right and top to bottom, both preferred reading directions.
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(it's cool and I like the choices though!)
https://bsky.app/profile/xkcd.com/post/3ldh4mqvzvs2l