Comment by andai

The article mentioned this study:

The minor third communicates sadness in speech, mirroring its use in music

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20515223/

This reminded me of how I keep hearing that major doesn't really sound happy, and minor doesn't really sound sad, it's purely cultural. (But Bouba does really sound round... :)

That doesn't sound right to me, but in that case maybe the speech thing is cultural too? It would be interesting to test it in other cultures. (Preferably ones that haven't been exposed to western music, if there still is such a thing!)