「アイタッ」「アウチ！」痛いときの言葉は、世界の131言語で「ア」の音が多かった

You hit your toe on a table. What do you say? In English, people say "Ouch!" In Japanese, many people say "Aita!" Both words start with an "a" sound. In 2024, a team of researchers looked at dictionaries from 131 languages.

All around the world, words for pain often had an "a" sound. Words for joy, like "yay," and words for disgust, like "yuck," did not share their sounds in the same way.

When people get hurt, they often make a short sound before they can think. English speakers say "ouch" or "ow," and Japanese speakers often say "aita." Words like these are called interjections.

A team of researchers collected more than 600 interjections from dictionaries of 131 languages. They looked at words for pain, disgust and joy. Pain words around the world tended to use an "a"-like vowel, or a sound that slides from "a" toward another vowel, like the "aw" in "ouch."

Words for joy and disgust did not follow one pattern. In English, for example, "yay" and "yippee" both show joy, but their vowels are different. The team also studied recordings of people making sounds without words, and only pain kept the same vowel in both.

Stub your toe in Tokyo and you might shout "aita!" Do it in London and it will probably be "ouch!" A study published in 2024 suggests that this shared "a" sound may be no accident.

Maïa Ponsonnet and her colleagues gathered more than 600 interjections from dictionaries of 131 languages and compared them with nearly 500 vowels measured in recordings of people making wordless sounds, such as screams and cries. In those wordless sounds, each feeling had its own vowel: an open "a" for pain, a weak, central vowel for disgust, and an "i"-like vowel for joy.

Once the sounds became words, things changed. Only pain words kept their vowel across regions, often as "a" or as a slide like "ai" or "aw." Words for joy and disgust varied from place to place. The pattern is a tendency, and it has exceptions.

The Japanese cry "ita!" begins with an "i" sound, because it comes from "itai," the everyday adjective for "painful." The team also leaves the cause open. They list several ideas that still need testing, from evolution to the way some sounds seem to suit some meanings.