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Is huh a universal word? (2013)

huh.ideophone.org

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Re: Is huh a universal word? (2013)

#12

Post by oh_sigh »

davidw wrote: post #8

Not all sounds like that are. In Italy, instead of saying "I don't know", you can say "boh?" with the oooo sometimes drawn out. It's something you start to understand from the context, but is by no means some kind of universal sound.

Happens in French too

Re: Is huh a universal word? (2013)

#13

Post by maddyboo »

davidw wrote: post #8

Not all sounds like that are. In Italy, instead of saying "I don't know", you can say "boh?" with the oooo sometimes drawn out. It's something you start to understand from the context, but is by no means some kind of universal sound.

If you read the full article, you’d see they specifically mention that they were studying ‘huh’ in the context of “other-initiated repair” (see the article for a definition), and they noted that ‘huh’-like words often have additional contextual uses, such as signifying a question, but those were beyond the scope of this research.

Re: Is huh a universal word? (2013)

#14

Post by wyattpeak »

reshie wrote: post #5

would make sense also like a natural gruntish with expresses something. mah or ma is another one and a lot of times the first word which has had quite a bit of study in of itself.

They address in the article why they believe it to be linguistic, and not a mere grunt.

Re: Is huh a universal word? (2013)

#15

Post by meruru »

davidw wrote: post #8

Not all sounds like that are. In Italy, instead of saying "I don't know", you can say "boh?" with the oooo sometimes drawn out. It's something you start to understand from the context, but is by no means some kind of universal sound.

>instead of saying "I don't know", you can say "boh?" with the oooo sometimes drawn out.

In Japan, the equivalent is "sah" with the aaaa sometimes drawn out.

Re: Is huh a universal word? (2013)

#17

Post by jmalicki »

packet_nerd wrote: post #7

They only studied 10 languages. That doesn't seem like enough to call it "universal". What about those African languages made up of all clicking sounds?

They studied 31 languages. One of the languages studied is ≠Akhoe Hai//om, which is a click language. It was not one of the 10 studied in deeper detail, but they found huh there.
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