Yanny/Laurel?

The way something sounds is based largely off of the shape and size of the thing the
soundwaves pass through when the sound is being produced. That’s why oboes sound different
than saxophones. The way we let air/soundwaves escape also controls the shape of the
soundwaves. So whatever fingering keys get pressed down while a woodwind is being played
are part of the shaping of the sound.
This same principal works for the vowels we say. Minute changes in the shape of our tongue
and how wide we open our mouth can mean completely different vowels, which then can mean
completely different words.
Figure 1. Tongue and Mouth Shape of American English Vowels

https://kids.britannica.com/students/assembly/view/3598

These shapes can be measured through their soundwaves, which, for sounds like
vowels, have “formants.” Formants are the points where these waves resonate, and they are
VERY specific for each vowel. The vowel in slam /æ/ has specific measurements for the first and
second formants that are different from the vowel in core /ɔ/, like in the following Figure 2.
Figure 2. Vowels /æ/ and /ɔ/ (said by Vanessa)
 But what’s happening in yanny/laurel with the vowels? A bit of a mess, really, because
whoever created it has messed with how these formants are resonating. I’ve separated the
sounds by consonants and vowels in the next image using the word “yanny.”
Figure 3. Yanny/Laurel with Formant Markings

All the red dots represent different formants, six or seven of them, depending on what’s
happening. The two ovals are showing spots where sometimes we have weak formants that
could be the second formant. What’s really going on is there’s a lot of feedback from the
incredibly poor quality sound clip. So our ears can’t tell for sure if we’re hearing an /æ/ or an
/ɔ/. Sometimes our ears pick up the formants in the yellow box, sometimes we hear the blue
oval.
The formants in the green oval are an even bigger mess, all over the place, with a much
weaker definition and shape. So why are some people hearing an “eeeee” sound and others a
final “L?” Because the sound /l/, like in the name Lyle, uses vibrating vowel cords. Seriously,
stick your fingers on your throat and hold out the consonant “LLLLLLLLLLLLL.” Now say “Lyle.”
Since there’s vibration, we’re going to see formants for the /l/, just like we would for the vowel
/i/, or “eeeee.”
Figure 4. Vowel /i/ and Consonant /l/ (said by Vanessa)

The F2 for “eeeee,” or /i/, is where the purple box is in Figure 3. The sporadic formants
in the green oval in Figure 3 are closer to what we see for the F2 for the consonant /l/. Our ears
are essentially struggling to figure out which sound it really is. This is why people are hearing
both “yanny” and “laurel.” None of the vowels or consonants are very distinct, which is the
whole point of the poor quality of the sound clip.
 Now what about the “y” or the “l” to start the word? Figure 5 helps us understand this.
Figure 5. Approximants of American English in Syllable Onset

http://www.lel.ed.ac.uk/~jkirby/hanoi/slides/lecture15-hanoi-4up.pdf

Look at how in the word “yet” the first consonant (the phonetic symbol is [ j]), it kind of
slides/glides into the vowel. Now look at the word “let,” how there’s a distinctive ending point
of the consonant /l/ and a clear spot where the vowel starts, an arrow marks this point. Let’s
compare them to our yanny/laurel word in Figure 6.
Figure 6. Yanny/Laurel Spectrogram Without Markings

The first consonant isn’t clearly the /l/ (laurel) or the /j/ (yanny). However, it is closer to
the /j/ sound and linguists would likely not identify this as an /l/. So why do people hear an /l/
at the beginning and the end of this word? Something super interesting called the McGurk
Effect (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RbNbE4egj_A( . When we talk to people we use
visual cues of lip placement, opening of the mouth, etc., to clear up any confusion. If we were
looking at the person saying this word, an /l/ or /j/ would be obvious. Since we can’t see the
person, our mind is forced to fill in the gaps with the closest possibility. All this means is our
brains are most plastic than set in stone than we realize.
 So the middle consonant? Is it a nasal /n/ or /m/? Or is it the rhotic /ɹ/, or the English R
sound? In English we make the /n/ in the same area of the mouth as the /ɹ/. The difference is
our tongue tip touches the top of our mouth for /n/. So why do some people (like me) hear an
/m/? Because when we say the /ɹ/, we round our lips. To say the /m/ we also use our lips—we
close them completely. So we have three major articulation cues battling for dominance, and
the happen to overlap in the way American English speakers pronounce three separate
consonants.

In short, the person that created the sound and then messed with its quality did so in
such a way that every sound can be understood as two or three different options to American
speakers of English. Our brain simply tries to fill in the overlaps, but we don’t have sufficient
information to say for sure one way or the other.