Is “Huh?” a Universal Word?(plosone.org)
plosone.org
Is “Huh?” a Universal Word?
http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0078273
11 comments
Yeah, from what I remember the last time this paper showed up on HN, they didn't really claim "huh" was a universal word, just there was some vaguely similar equivalent in many languages.
That seems like a much weaker (and more believable) claim, but it probably doesn't make for good headlines...
That seems like a much weaker (and more believable) claim, but it probably doesn't make for good headlines...
While that may be true, it is easy to see how they might have come from there, and it's easy to see how in multiple places around the world that "word" could come to mean the same thing all on its own.
"Huh?" is simply the onomatopoeia of a quick, burst of air across the neutral state of mouth, tongue and lips, maybe with the opening of one's mouth following it.
If someone didn't hear something, or if someone wanted to acknowledge their presence and attentiveness, what simpler way than making a quick sound, without even trying to define it in any direction. That sound happens to be what we call 'huh?' or 'hm?' or 'eh?'
"Huh?" is simply the onomatopoeia of a quick, burst of air across the neutral state of mouth, tongue and lips, maybe with the opening of one's mouth following it.
If someone didn't hear something, or if someone wanted to acknowledge their presence and attentiveness, what simpler way than making a quick sound, without even trying to define it in any direction. That sound happens to be what we call 'huh?' or 'hm?' or 'eh?'
Neutral mouth state in your language. That distinction is kind of the point. It also begins with an aspiration which some languages do not have.
The mouth state I was referring to was closed. Are there people elsewhere that normally hold their closed mouth in a :O position?
I think the part about quick and simple sound is the significant aspect to take away from this. In Swedish the word is "Va", which sounds very different from huh, but share the characteristic of being simple and short.
Actually we have the exact same word in Armenian -- «Հը՞», with the exact same meaning
How do you pronounce «Հը՞» ?
And «Հը՞» looks crazy btw...
And «Հը՞» looks crazy btw...
Հը is pronounced pretty much exactly as "Huh".
Հ = H
ը = the sound of the letter "i" in the words "birth" and "dirt".
՞ = ?; it is the Armenian question mark. Unlike Latin languages, the question mark is placed adjacent to the vowel it's meant to raise the pitch of. English equivalent would be look like this: "Hu?h"
Հ = H
ը = the sound of the letter "i" in the words "birth" and "dirt".
՞ = ?; it is the Armenian question mark. Unlike Latin languages, the question mark is placed adjacent to the vowel it's meant to raise the pitch of. English equivalent would be look like this: "Hu?h"
I didn't imagine question marks (or exclamation marks too?) could be placed anywhere but at the end of a sentence. The Armenian syntax makes a lot of sense, I feel smarter to know this, than!ks :)
Actually, yes.
Imagine saying "When, tomorrow?"
In most latin-based languages, you'd have only one question mark at the end, although you raise your pitch twice (on "When", and on "tomorrow"). In Armenian it would look like -- "Whe՞n, tomo՞rrow."
Exclamation mark follows the same logic, and looks like: ՜
"Hello!" = "Ողջո՜ւյն"
Imagine saying "When, tomorrow?"
In most latin-based languages, you'd have only one question mark at the end, although you raise your pitch twice (on "When", and on "tomorrow"). In Armenian it would look like -- "Whe՞n, tomo՞rrow."
Exclamation mark follows the same logic, and looks like: ՜
"Hello!" = "Ողջո՜ւյն"
According to Wikipedia, "linguists classify Armenian as an independent branch of the Indo-European language family" and "Armenian has its own unique script, the Armenian alphabet, invented in 405 AD by Mesrop Mashtots"[1].
As a Turkish citizen who lived on the other side of the border for 23 years, I was not aware that Armenian had such a unique script and grammar. Is it harder to learn than the Latin alphabet? I'm curious because we apparently switched to Latin script for writing Turkish from Arabic script just because of the steep learning curve (at least that's what they had thought us at school).
[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenian_language
As a Turkish citizen who lived on the other side of the border for 23 years, I was not aware that Armenian had such a unique script and grammar. Is it harder to learn than the Latin alphabet? I'm curious because we apparently switched to Latin script for writing Turkish from Arabic script just because of the steep learning curve (at least that's what they had thought us at school).
[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenian_language
Are «» the Armenian quotation marks? Lav lav es, hamar sowroomem; the only Armenian words I know.
We have "ha?" which is read very similar to huh and meaning the same thing, also in Turkish. This is getting interesting.
The downvotes within this thread are bizarre.
Also see supplementary materials here: http://huh.ideophone.org/
In Malayalam we say something like aayh ?
People used "eh?" when I was in Japan. I had to teach myself to use it rather than "huh?"
It's not as common but they do say "haa?" (sounding a lot like our "huh?") too. Another very common one besides "e?" is "n?", and also "are?" (more associated with "what?"). Also eeee? or nnnnn?.
Best online japanese-english resource imo: http://eow.alc.co.jp/search?q=huh&ref=sa
Best online japanese-english resource imo: http://eow.alc.co.jp/search?q=huh&ref=sa
It seems more like the inflection which indicates a question is universal, not any specific word.
The French do not say "huh".
hm?
Huh?
Huh? should be "YO", eh?
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=8369
shows that even the authors of the article admit that there is not the same phonetic form of this word in all major languages, much less all languages in the whole world.