Why Ice Cream Sounds Fat and Crackers Sound Skinny | Hacker News Reader

Why Ice Cream Sounds Fat and Crackers Sound Skinny

alumni.stanford.edu

67 pointsjestinjoy124 comments

Interesting. Given the questions:

    Which brand of laptop seems bigger, Detal or Dutal?
    Which brand of vacuum cleaner seems heavier, Keffi or Kuffi?
    Which brand of ketchup seems thicker, Nellen or Nullen?

The first question may have affected the answers to the others. "Dutal" may trigger an association chain "Duty" -> "Heavy Duty" -> "Large", and then naturally all the other answers should be consistent with that one. Is there a mechanism scientists use to defend against such a "snowballing" effect?

Yes, ask the questions in random order

I am litterally unable to answer any of these questions. I just can't, my brain doesn't respond, it's like asking me to say something in a language I know nothing about.

Interesting.. could be a method of consumer testing for product naming for a new (made up word). Depending on the product, you may want it to seem heavier.

I wonder how much pronunciation affects the results. Given their questions:

    Which brand of laptop seems bigger, Detal or Dutal?
    Which brand of vacuum cleaner seems heavier, Keffi or Kuffi?
    Which brand of ketchup seems thicker, Nellen or Nullen?

In British English I only chose the 'u' for the second question (the first by association - Detal = metal). How would US Americans pronounce these?

Deh-tal, Doo-tal, Keh-fi, Kuh-fi, Neh-len, Nuh-len

Hmmm, I don't think I saw any other languages besides Spanish and English, is this really a universal effect across languages?

I am especially curious because I am inclined to believe that certain sounds are not distributed the same in all languages. This could mean that either this theory is untested on a broader set of languages, or that the typical vernacular in a language tends to avoid a certain type of word more than other languages.

I actually have the opposite reaction in a way. When I hear ice cream in my head, I hear something like Julie Andrews saying it, and it sounds sweet and light. With cracker it has a thick American accent and sounds harsh and dense. I am from the US.

The same here. And as you, English is not my first language.

What do you mean by "thick American accent"?

Probably means a Southern accent.

Odd, I'm Southern and thought he meant Northern...

What exactly is a northern accent? Is that a midwest accent crossed with a new england accent crossed with a new jersey accent?

Southerner here: A "northern accent" classically means any accent from the larger northeastern cities. Boston, Jersey, they're all subsets of "northern" to the Southern brain.

What's funny is I live in Nola and the traditional New Orleans "Yatty" accent sounds "northern" to me (somewhere in Brooklyn to be specific).

I think similar to the Southern mentioned above, I almost said New York (meaning city) but then realized I probably don't know the exact specification for a NYC accent and was just generalizing really so put Northern and called it a day.

Is there something confusing about the idea of an American accent? Americans certainly have no problem talking about an English accent as if Cockneys sound anything like Scousers. To American ears, of course, they actually do, because those accents share some characteristics that are nearly absent from all American accents (and vice-versa.)

> Americans certainly have no problem talking about an English accent as if Cockneys sound anything like Scousers. To American ears, of course, they actually do

As an American, I wouldn't say that; while I would say "English accent" in conversation, to me that means something more specific than just "anything from England", but less specific than one specific accent; in my head it's "James Bond but not Sean Connery" (I'm not very familiar with those movies, so I don't know the different actors). They probably have different specific accents, but they're similar-ish to me (in my limited exposure), but not something I'd ever confuse with like, Cockney (that being the only specific English accent I know by name).

So yeah, I'm not sure what he means by American accent. Being more familiar with the different regional accents, I'm curious which one he's referring to, since they're so diverse. I casually expected that since the US is so big, geographically, people might have more specific ideas of regional American accents.

You're probably right about the "because those accents share some characteristics", though. American accents sound so distinct to me, I never really thought about them being all sharing something distinctively American-identifying about them; I wonder what it is about them.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_English_regiona...

It's not mysterious, it's well studied and documented:)

Didn't cross my mind to check there. Thanks for the link.

You skipped the article entirely and went straight to the comments, didn't you? The article is about names of ice cream brands, not the phrase "ice cream" itself.

As an outsider, the uncited studies sound suspiciously like the sort of thing that is guaranteed to generate statistically significant values with enough iterations...

Does Frozen yogurt follow this logic? It seems like a harder sounding word might imply the health effects

Once I've found a paper studying the brand names and how to create new ones that feels right and communicates the image you want.

Yes, those were some fun times.

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