Sounds awfully like the Hindi word for 'yes'.
Nup, that's different.
Ok, the Hindi one has a long vowel and it's nasalised, but still.
Is huh a universal word? (2013)
31–40 of 93 posts
Re: Is huh a universal word? (2013)
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
>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.
I've never heard "sah" used for "I don't know". Sah is similar to "you know" as in valley girl speak. Hey, yesterday you know, I want to the mall you know, and there was this sale, you know, it was totally cheap, you know, so I bought 3 pairs of shoes, you know, aren't they great!? In Japanese you can replace every "you know" with "sah". You can put "sah" at the end of sentence when you don't know something or are co…
You must be thinking of さ instead of さあ. The latter is often used to express "I don't know" or "who knows".
Re: Is huh a universal word? (2013)
#33I must be skimming too much. They say "huh" is universal but point out Japan (and apparently Korean) use "eh". "eh" != "huh", not even close nor is its usage. Maybe these are are different but you can use "eh" to acknowledge you heard. With a question inflection to point out you didn't hear.
Is that in the paper? Because I can't find that in the article and neither Japanese nor Korean is part of the 10 listed languages.
Re: Is huh a universal word? (2013)
#34Related: shh (request for silence) is a word and I think it's universal
Re: Is huh a universal word? (2013)
#35Related: shh (request for silence) is a word and I think it's universal
From personal experience people seem to universally ignore it unless repeated at least three times with increasing strength :D (just kidding, that's probably just my better half)
Re: Is huh a universal word? (2013)
#36In many parts of India India its "aaan?", Or sometimes just a nasalized "hmmm?"
Re: Is huh a universal word? (2013)
#37me Japanese use "huh?" with anger when i cant understand his word of meaning
Re: Is huh a universal word? (2013)
#38Not 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.
The article doesn't say it's a universal sound, only a universal concept (but even then, it only takes one example to disprove a theory like this, and linguistics is littered with examples of "universal" things only to be disproven by some obscure language somewhere)
Re: Is huh a universal word? (2013)
#39Related: shh (request for silence) is a word and I think it's universal
There's no similar word in Thai.
Re: Is huh a universal word? (2013)
#40I must be skimming too much. They say "huh" is universal but point out Japan (and apparently Korean) use "eh". "eh" != "huh", not even close nor is its usage. Maybe these are are different but you can use "eh" to acknowledge you heard. With a question inflection to point out you didn't hear.
Huh is not used in spanish at all. Maybe in the more english-influenced caribbean regions but in the southern cone we don't say "huh" at all, rather "eh?".