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Huh? Is it universal?

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iguanamon
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 Message 1 of 11
09 November 2013 at 1:07pm | IP Logged 
I saw this article in today's NYT and thought it might be interesting to the community-
The Syllable Everyone Recognizes

NYT wrote:
Are there words that are universally understood, across all countries and cultures? A team of linguists has proposed one: “huh.”

Huh?

In a paper published on Friday in the journal PLOS One, researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in the Netherlands announced that they had found strikingly similar versions in languages scattered across five continents, suggesting that “Huh?” is a universal word. ...


Link to study Is "Huh" a universal word?

So, what do you think? Huh?
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Lykeio
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 Message 2 of 11
09 November 2013 at 1:37pm | IP Logged 
No, since by it's nature universal means present across all languages right? I can think
of several which don't use it. I suppose if you take the loose definition this study
seems to, being present in each continent, then yeah it is universal.

I feel old and grumpy (despite being neither) complaining but this is basically what
happens when you gut the precise philological core from the discipline. Once we had
laryngeals, now we have huh.
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Henkkles
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 Message 3 of 11
09 November 2013 at 3:15pm | IP Logged 
The article doesn't say which languages were used, but it says that the sampling was TEN languages, TEN of which at least TWO were Germanic! I don't think that holds any water or can face any scrutiny whatsoever.
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Leurre
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 Message 4 of 11
09 November 2013 at 4:01pm | IP Logged 
I bet though if you said any one or two syllable words with the same intonation that you
use for 'huh~?', then you'd broaden the scope of languages whose native speakers would
understand you.

Heck even in English, try replacing 'huh' with 'A', or 'Eh', no one would not understand
you.

But universal in the world of languages is a huge claim, I imagine.
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Ari
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 Message 5 of 11
09 November 2013 at 5:31pm | IP Logged 
If we're pretty loose with the phonetics, a similar word is found in all the languages I speak. Swedish "öh", French "hein", Cantonese "haa2", and so on.
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shk00design
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 Message 6 of 11
10 November 2013 at 12:38am | IP Logged 
I don't think there is enough similarities between languages to draw conclusions.

The words that are similar tend to be interjections used in front of sentences.
Here is a short list in Chinese:
嘩 huā for a crashing sound (in Cantonese pronunciation wa for Wow!)
啊 ā for surprise Ah! / Oh!
唷/喲 yō for sign of surprise Oh! My! 噫 yī for yeah,
嘻 xī to laugh or giggle
嗯 èn OK, what?
嗯 en for approval
啫 zhě (used a lot in Cantonese to mean so what... like someone saying your friend can sing better than you and
you reply: 啫)
啊呀 āyā used frequently for surprise
哎喲 āiyō for ouch or in pain

(The Chinese expressions listed all contain the character 口 kǒu on the left for mouth).

Edited by shk00design on 10 November 2013 at 12:41am

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Medulin
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 Message 7 of 11
10 November 2013 at 3:03am | IP Logged 
In Croatian we say ''ahm'' (English respelling) and it sounds like Portuguese ã.
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montmorency
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 Message 8 of 11
10 November 2013 at 4:26pm | IP Logged 
I've been watching the Montalbano series which has just finished on BBC TV. (It's set
in Sicily).

I was amused by the way Montalbano always makes "eh" "oh" "umm" noises during a
conversations (when the other person is talking...sort of "yes, go on" noises). Once
I'd noticed them, I couldn't stop listening out for them.

I suppose we do the same in British English, but it's not as noticeable.


Something else I've been thinking about is how universal is the "question tone" - the
raising of pitch towards the end of a sentence.


I suspect it's by no means universal, even in Western European languages, but I'd be
interested to hear the experiences of others.


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