THE INTERNET — An audio clip saying either the word "yanny" or "laurel" has gone viral over social media. <br /><br />The short audio clip originated on Vocabulary.com under the word "laurel," and was traced back to a Flowery Branch High School freshman in Georgia on May 11, who posted the audio clip to her Instagram story, according to Wired.<br /><br />The sound clip was then posted by YouTuber Cloe Feldman onto Twitter where it took off.<br />A possible explanation why people are hearing different words is because the file is "acoustically ambiguous" or very poor-quality, according to Northwestern University neurobiology professor Nina Kraus. <br />The clip that went viral had already been re-recorded several times, meaning there were multiple steps that degraded the quality of the audio. <br /><br />According to Brad Story, professor of speech, language and hearing sciences at the University of Arizona, the two words also have similar sound patterns. <br />This combined with the low quality of the sound file could account for the different things people hear. <br />The pitch of the clip can also affect what is heard. In general, people heard "yanny" more consistently when the pitch was lower and "laurel" when the pitch was higher.
