despite the fact that foreign languages can sound totally confusing if you don't understand them, there are actually a lot of similarities if you look closely – at least for the most common words, such as pronouns, body parts, properties ("small", "full") and verbs.
For example, the word for "nose" often involves "neh" or "oo" sounds; the terms for "red" and "round" usually include an "r" sound.
"It doesn't mean all words have these sounds, but the relationship is much stronger than we'd expect by chance," says Christiansen, noting that words for body parts in particular showed an unexpectedly high association between sounds and meaning.
