Languages are more alike than you think: Two thirds of the world use similar sounds for common words

The variation between the thousands of languages spoken across the world would make you think that they have very little in common. An analysis of nearly two-thirds of the world's languages has shown humans tend to use the same sounds for common objects and ideas, no matter what language they are speaking. An analysis of nearly two-thirds of the world's languages has shown humans tend to use the same sounds for common objects and ideas, no matter what language they are speaking (stock image) The study, published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, looked at two thirds of the world's languages and found a pattern formed between the words used for certain basic concepts. The 100 words in the study include things like nose, tongue, leaf and sand. The researchers, from Cornell University in New York, say the study shatters a concept considered a cornerstone in linguistics - the century-old idea that the relationship between a sound of a word and its meaning is arbitrary.