Made-up words like “clisious” and “smanious” are easier to remember when they sound beautiful. Could the feel of a word shape how we learn languages, sell products and even how languages evolve?

How many vowels does English have? Five, right? A, E, I, O, U. Oh, and sometimes Y. So, six? Actually, English has at least 14 different vowel sounds and, depending on the speaker and dialect, maybe ...

These four sounds are missing from some of the seven words you can never say on television, and the pattern prevails in other languages too, researchers say. By Elizabeth Preston “Holy motherforking ...