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McDonald's swears up and down that the little yellow "Minions" Happy Meal toy is speaking only nonsense words and not something a little more adult. Experts say the company may be right, and the curse words many hear may be tied to how our brains are primed to find words even when they're not really there. "The brain tries to find a pattern match, even when just receiving noise, and it is good at pattern recognition," says Dr. Steven Novella, a neurologist at the Yale School of Medicine. "Once the brain feels it has found a best match, then that is what you hear. The clarity of the speech actually increases with multiple exposures, or if you are primed by being told what to listen for" - as most people who heard the toy online already had been. The technical name for the phenomenon is "pareidolia," hearing sounds or seeing images that seem meaningful but are actually random. It leads people to see shapes in clouds, a man in the moon or the face of Jesus on a grilled cheese sandwich.

This is an interesting article that explains the weird linguistic phenomena in which people are able to read a sentence where the letters in each word are jumbled up. Although scientists haven't came up with an exact conclusion for this amazing human capability, this article provides a few theories.

Our human brains are naturally pattern-seeking, hence we attempt to make sense of gibberish, a phenomenon known as pareidolia. Pareidolia is also the same reason why we see shapes in clouds, hear Satanic msgs. in music played backwards, think Minion Happy Meal toys are spouting obscenities, and understand the vocal substitutions made by ventriloquists.