Big letters, big feelings

Advertising uses a lot of pictures. Pictures awaken our particular interests. We look at them longer and more intently than letters. As a result, we remember advertisements with pictures better. Pictures also produce strong emotional reactions. The brain recognizes pictures very quickly. It knows immediately what can be seen in the picture. Letters function differently than pictures. They are abstract characters. Therefore, our brain reacts slower to letters. First, it must understand the meaning of the word. One might say the characters must be translated by the language part of the brain. But emotions can be produced using letters too. The text just needs to be very large. Studies show that big letters have a big effect as well. Large letters aren't just more noticeable than small letters. They also produce a stronger emotional reaction. This is true for positive as well as negative feelings. The size of things has always been important to mankind. Man must react quickly to danger. And when something is large, it's usually already quite close! So it's understandable that large pictures produce strong reactions then. Less clear is how we react to large letters. Letters aren't actually a signal for the brain. Despite this, it shows greater activity when it sees large letters. This result is very interesting to scientists. It shows how important letters have become for us. Our brain has somehow learned how to react to writing…

Guess the language!

______ is counted among the Indo-Iranian languages. It is spoken natively by 130 million people. The majority of those people live in Pakistan. However, it is also spoken in the Indian state of ******. ______ is hardly ever used as a written language in Pakistan. It is different in India because there the language holds an official status. ______ is written in its own script. It also has a very long literary tradition.

Texts have been found that are almost 1000 years old. ______ is also very interesting from a phonological point of view. This is because it is a tonal language. In tonal languages, the pitch of the accented syllable changes their meaning. In ______, the accented syllable can take on three different pitches. That is very unusual for Indo-European languages. That makes ______ that much more appealing!