Words that sound 'nice' or 'sweet' are easier to remember

How a word sounds can decide whether it lingers in memory. In a lab experiment with 100 English speakers, researchers found that some invented words stick better in memory because their sounds feel more pleasing.

Instead of using real vocabulary loaded with meaning, the team built nonsense words that stripped language down to pure sound. 

By tweaking the phonemes, basic units of speech sound in words, they could watch how small changes in sound pattern nudged what people remembered.

Words shape what we remember

Language researchers sometimes talk about phonaesthetics, the study of how word sounds feel pleasant or harsh. 

Earlier analyses of favorite English words hinted that patterns like soft continuants and front vowels often show up in words people call beautiful.

The work was led by Theresa Matzinger, a linguist at the University of Vienna. Her research follows how language evolves, how it is learned in real communities, and how subtle preferences shape the sounds that survive.

Sound versus meaning

Past work on word beauty usually relied on real vocabulary like harmony or drudge, where meaning and sound are tangled together. 

By stripping away meaning and focusing only on sound, this project tackles a question that earlier surveys and poet lists could not cleanly answer.

Beyond words people like, research on sound symbolism, the idea that speech sounds echo meaning, finds acoustic patterns that feel negative or exciting. 

For example, short vowels, voiceless consonants, and hissing s sounds often appear in words people rate as harsh and emotionally intense.

How tests worked

To test whether sound shapes beauty and memory, the team built twelve pseudowords, made up items that follow sound rules but lack meaning. Some items were crafted to sound appealing, others neutral or harsh.

Participants saw each written form on screen while hearing it spoken and were asked to repeat the sounds. Later they typed every word they could recall, then rated how appealing each one felt on a seven point scale.

When the team crunched the data, an odd pattern appeared. Neutral items earned the top appeal scores, yet participants retrieved over half the appealing items and only about one third of the harsh ones.

Participants also rated each invented word twice, in two separate passes through the list. Those ratings lined up closely across rounds, suggesting that each person carried a fairly stable sense of which sound patterns felt most appealing.

Recalling words we remember

“Have aesthetic value that correlates with words’ memorability,” said Matzinger. That comment points to a subtle effect, where small differences in sound pattern walk hand in hand with small advantages in recall.

Psychologists already know that emotional arousal, the brain’s level of alertness when feelings run high, can boost how firmly events are stored. 

Higher arousal tends to focus attention and helps the brain tag certain pieces of information for longer term storage.

Emotion shifts memory

At the same time, researchers talk about negativity bias, the tendency for negative events to leave stronger traces than positive ones. 

That perspective suggests that both pleasant and unpleasant sounds could, in principle, stand out more than bland ones when people try to remember them.

Taken together, emotional and memory research suggests that what feels good, what feels intense, and what the brain stores best are not the same. 

Matzinger’s data fit that picture, with appeal ratings and recall advantages pulling in slightly different directions rather than lining up perfectly.

What this could mean

For language teachers and textbook writers, the results hint at a small but useful lever. Choosing new vocabulary with smoother sound patterns might make it slightly easier for people to learn and recall unfamiliar forms.

Brand designers already care how names feel in the mouth. Results here suggest that certain phonotactic patterns, allowed combinations of sounds within a language, may be more memorable than others.

If people reliably find some sound patterns easier to remember, tiny advantages could add up as stories, songs, and slang travel through communities. 

Over time, the words that sound just right to many ears may be the ones that stay in circulation while their less appealing cousins quietly drop away.

More research on remembering words

Future experiments could test whether the same sound preferences hold in other languages, or whether each speech community carries its own taste. 

Studies that look at sign languages, gesture, or even musical phrases might reveal similar links between aesthetic choices and what sticks in memory.

This kind of work also has a social side, because ideas about beautiful or ugly language can feed prejudice. 

Careful research on basic sound patterns may help separate gut feeling from stereotype when people judge how a language or accent “should” sound.

The study is published in PLOS One.

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