There’s been a heated debate the last couple days over an audio clip of a single word. Some people think the voice is saying “laurel” and other people hear it as “yanny.”
It turns out a high school freshman in Georgia got the debate going last Friday when she looked up the word “laurel” for her literature class. So she looked up the definition on the website Vocabulary.com, played a clip of how to pronounce it, and THAT’S where the audio came from! So if “laurel” is what you hear… you’re technically correct.
Katie heard hear “yanny” then couldn’t decide after playing it for some of her classmates so she posted it on Instagram. It snowballed from there.
The reason some people hear “yanny” instead of “laurel” has to do with how the audio was recorded, how your speakers play it back, what you’re expecting to hear, and which frequencies your brain zeroes in on. Younger people tend to hear higher frequencies better than older people do so young people are more likely to hear it as “yanny” instead of “laurel.”
Read More –> Wired