How to really learn vocabulary & remember it? Iconicity is the language learner’s missing piece. Let’s look at what iconicity is and how you can use it.

How to Learn Vocabulary & Remember it in Any Language

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What does iconicity mean?

Iconicity is a linguistic feature that refers to the relationship between a sound or look of a word and its meaning.

In the past, linguists thought that words had no connection to their meaning – it was all just random! A pretty famous linguist de Saussure summed this up by saying: for a sign, there is an arbitrary relationship between the signifier and the signified.

However, recently, linguists have been learning a lot more about the opposite of this random arbitrariness – iconicity. Even more recently, there’s been some interest into how this can be useful for language learners.

There’s lots of examples of how iconicity pops up for language learners. It could be onomatopoeia, co-speech gestures, and prosody (or how we say words) to name a few common examples.

We’ll consider all of these three in this article.

Iconicity in languages

Iconicity is a feature of language that allows us to express ourselves in ways that are visually (or at least, symbolically) similar. It’s different across languages, so we can’t assume that all languages will have the same degree of iconicity.

Japanese uses lots of onomatopoeia—words that sound like what they mean — which can make it easier for learners to learn new words and remember them.

Sign languages use lots of iconic gestures, but not all signs are strictly iconic; some involve more abstract symbols than others.

It’s believed that the majority of languages have some level of iconicity.

A common experiment to test iconicity is to show 2 shapes to participants – a jagged, spiky shape and a curvy rounded shape. Participants are then asked to name the shapes: which is bouba and which is kiki?

In most experiments across many languages, bouba gets tied with the rounded shape and kiki with the spiky one. Funny, huh? So we might just have better guessing skills in a new language that we typically give ourselves credit for!

This is likely to do with the shape our mouths make and the sound of the ‘b’, ‘ou’ and ‘a’ sounds of bouba versus the hard ‘k’ and ‘i’ sounds of kiki. Try making those sounds and notice the shape your mouth makes to see what I mean.

However, there have been a couple of bouba and kiki experiments that didn’t share the usual results. Syuba is a language spoken in Nepal and when Styles (no, not Harry) and Gawne conducted the famous bouba/kiki test with Syuba speakers in 2017, there was no clearcut bouba = round shape and kiki = spiky shape response.

They decided this is probably because the sound patterns needed to say ‘bouba’ and ‘kiki’ don’t exist in the Syuba language.

That’s not to say though that iconicity doesn’t exist at all in this language, but it’s interesting to see how these things work differently in different languages.

How can we use iconicity in language learning?

So what does all this have to do with language learning then?

Iconicity is a powerful tool in language learning. When you use it, you can learn new words, grammar and even concepts more easily and quickly.

Onomatopoeia, Sound Symbolism & Prosody

Some words are, of course, more iconic than others. It will likely be easier to remember ‘moo’ and ‘bang’ than ‘cow’ and ‘gun’, as there’s a direct iconic connection between the words ‘moo’ and ‘bang’ and their meanings.

On the other hand, for ‘cow’ and ‘gun’, it might seem the words have been more randomly assigned and there’s less to help us figure out and remember the meaning. But, hey, that’s not the end. When we know about iconicity and come across a word that doesn’t feel too iconic or easily memorable – we just have to get creative and have a go at creating our own iconicity!

As an example of how this works in practice, let’s take the word ‘run’. Let’s see how we can remember vocabulary here.

First of all, we can consider onomatopoeia, sound-symbolism, and prosody. Is there a way we can change the way we “say” run in our heads? Perhaps putting the word to the beat of feet hitting the pavement. Run, run, run, run.

Co-Speech Gestures

Secondly, we can add in co-speech gesture. Maybe this looks like moving your arms back and forth as if you’re running down that pavement yourself.

Essentially, this involves adding physicality to your vocabulary learning. If you’ve ever come across the teaching concept of Total Physical Response (TPR) then this might be familiar to you.

Some co-speech gestures may be easily iconic, such as your arms making that movement as if you’re running. However, others might be more arbitrary. For example, if you want to remember ‘run’ as in ‘run the country’, you’ll likely have a more abstract co-speech gesture. This is still fine!

One of my favourite things about iconicity that I want to try myself is to learn a sign language alongside a new language. For example, learning the signs in Egyptian Sign Language at the same time as new words in Egyptian Arabic. Not only does this help to make the Egyptian Arabic words more iconic by adding co-speech gesture, but it also lets you learn 2 languages at once! And they don’t interfere with each other – they can only help.

Patterns

As we think again about the sound, it’s also useful to actively consider connections to words in the new language that we already know. So if we already know ‘gun’, then we can notice the shared ‘-un’ sound.

To take iconicity further, are there any other patterns you can spot? Maybe you try adding verb endings you know like ‘-ing’ and ‘-ed’. You soon learn that ‘runed’ isn’t a word, and ‘ran’ is what you’re after. You check your irregular verb list and spot that the u-a-u (run-ran-run) vowel change pattern isn’t a common one. Interesting. Even if it doesn’t correlate, you’ve still spent more time with the word.

If it’s interesting to you, it can be fun to look into etymology (aka where words come from. We’ll call it word history).

This all helps with how to learn vocabulary – to create more connections for you and make this at-first-glance arbitrary word a little more iconic for you. Whilst writing this, I just did this for ‘run’. It comes from Old English ‘rinnan’. As a German speaker, this reminds me of ‘rennen’ – great! A new connection.

Let’s look at another example. You’re learning adjectives in Russian. You begin to notice a pattern emerging in the sound of the words. The “bigger” adjectives like big, high, wide all have a stressed ‘o’:

Bolshoy (большой)
Vysoky (высо́кий)
Shiroky (Широкий)

On the other hand, the opposites small, low, and narrow are “smaller”. They often have ‘i’, ‘e’, or ‘u’ sounds and are shorter. It’s as if they take up less space in your mouth to say them:

Malenky (маленький)
Nizky (низкий)
Uzky (узкий)

How to learn vocabulary here then? Look for patterns. Once you begin to consciously look for and spot these patterns, you’ll eventually begin to spot them without needing to think about it too much. It’s spotting these patterns that makes iconicity help you learn languages.

Applying Everything To Your Vocabulary Learning

Once you know the basic concept of iconicity, you can apply it further to your own learning too. In essence, what iconicity does for language learners is make words more memorable.

Think about how you can make even the most arbitrary of words more iconic and more memorable for you. Perhaps it’s adding visual images, GIFs or short videos to your digital flashcards. Maybe it’s creating stories and contexts for new words you learn. It could even be making the most of augmented reality and virtual reality apps and games for languages.

The core message to take away from iconicity – to make things memorable – can be applied across your own language learning. So go go go – get creative and have fun!

Final thoughts on How to Learn Vocabulary

How to learn vocabulary? Iconicity is a useful tool in language learning. It can help you learn new words, remember them, and understand them. It can also be used to help you learn new grammar structures and understand existing ones more deeply.

The next time you’re struggling to learn a new word or concept, try thinking about how it relates to something else you already know. If there’s no direct relationship between the two things (like how “soup” sounds like it could be an onomatopoeia), try looking for an indirect relationship (such as if “soup” is also used as an idiomatic expression). This technique will assist your brain in making connections between concepts so that they’ll stick with you longer than if they were only presented in isolation!

As a language learner, you will benefit from a deeper understanding of iconicity and how to find it in your target language. Iconicity is a very useful tool in the learning process; it can help you learn a language faster and provide you with more opportunities to expand your vocabulary, as well as make sense of grammatical structures more easily. All handy stuff when we want to know how to learn vocabulary. Additionally, studying iconicity could lead to improved memory recall and increased communication skills—both important factors when learning any new language!

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