Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Is huh a universal word? (2013)

huh.ideophone.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 93 posts

Re: Is huh a universal word? (2013)

#81

Post by aceawan »

prmph wrote: post #57

A bit OT, but here is another, probably related concept: What is the literal meaning of "to understand" in your language? In at least 3 three languages that I know (Twi & Ga, major languages in Ghana, and English), the literal meaning evokes the sense of standing or sitting under something. I wonder if it is the same in many other languages

In french "comprendre", from "prendre" — to take and com, a latin root that means with, so litteraly, to take with/within you.

An interesting thing to note is that "hypothesis" has almost the same litteral meaning as "understand". "hypo" means under/above and thesis means "to put, to place something" or "position"

Re: Is huh a universal word? (2013)

#82

Post by tomxor »

justtopost wrote: post #80
tomxor wrote: post #65

I've noticed my partner when speaking in her dialect uses "uh"/"ah" a lot - which sounds pretty much like "huh" and even without understanding most of the words it's pretty clear this is the meaning in a conversation. I think this sound is probably more common in languages that lack a collection of more elaborate and synonymously used words for this purpose such as in English with ["what", "pardon", "sorry", "excuse…

Oddly, i seem to only hear extended uhmmms in english. I am sure there is a spoken word frequency database we could compare, or create somewhat easily scraping captions. Seems like a good project.

> Oddly, i seem to only hear extended uhmmms in english.

hah, but doesn't that have a different meaning? as in "i'm thinking" not "i didn't hear you etc".

Re: Is huh a universal word? (2013)

#83

Post by packet_nerd »

adrianN wrote: post #56
titanix2 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Still, studying only 31 languages and argue that something is universal is dumb as heck. Given there are 6000 of them safer approach would be the search for almost universal or widely distributed phenomena.

If those 31 languages cover >90% of all humans I think making claims about universality is reasonably justified.

If the claim is that the majority of humans speak a language which includes huh? as a feature, then sure. But that doesn't seem very interesting scientifically...

By calling it a universal word, I guess I thought they were referring to the concept of linguistic universals [1], which are interesting since they might suggest something about the deeper way in which our brains work. To make a claim about linguistic universals like that I really think they should study more than 10 (31) languages.

According to this page [2], 44% of people speak an Indo-European language, and 96% speak a member of one of the top 10 language families. The remaining 4% includes 84 language families. I imagine there's a ton of variety there, and for understanding human language and cognition they all probably have just as much value as the larger language families.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_universal

[2] https://www.vistawide.com/languages/language_families_statis...

Re: Is huh a universal word? (2013)

#84

Post by Grue3 »

deanCommie wrote: post #43

I moved from Russia to Canada as a kid and remember reading English-language books and being really confused by the word "ouch". I thought it would be really weird to say "ouch" when you accidentally stumble or hurt yourself - it felt completely unnatural. It was fascinating that different cultures have such different exclamations for pain! Well it turns out that it's not the case. Humans all make roughly the same so…

Russian here, I say "ouch" because it sounds way cooler than Russian "ay-ay-ay" and contrary to popular belief it's possible to say whatever you want unless the pain is truly unbearable.

Re: Is huh a universal word? (2013)

#85

Post by ZoltanAK »

danielbarla wrote: post #71
marcodave wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

not my native language, but in hungarian "to understand" is "magyarázni", which literally means "to hungarianize", which I think is amazing :)

"magyarázni" is actually to "explain", though it does seem to share a common root with Magyar, the word we use for our people. The word understand would be "érteni", and I'm not sure it has any interesting roots other than "ér" meaning vein or stream (potentially, did you get its meaning / source?) I too have wondered about the flavor and basic influence these kind of things must have on those who use the language. I…

There's "felfogni", which means "to understand" as well. Cf. English "to grasp" and German "auffassen". Confounder: the Hungarian word is quite likely to be a direct translation of the German version!

> The word understand would be "érteni", and I'm not sure it has any interesting roots other than "ér" meaning vein or stream (potentially, did you get its meaning / source?)

It's worth noting that "érint" (the verb "touch") appears to have the same root as "ért".

Re: Is huh a universal word? (2013)

#86

Post by Retra »

adrianN wrote: post #56
titanix2 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Still, studying only 31 languages and argue that something is universal is dumb as heck. Given there are 6000 of them safer approach would be the search for almost universal or widely distributed phenomena.

If those 31 languages cover >90% of all humans I think making claims about universality is reasonably justified.

Universal should mean that virtually every human in history used it. Just because something is pervasive in modern societies does not mean is a fundamental feature of human nature. Language is universal. Fear and anger are universal.

Re: Is huh a universal word? (2013)

#87

Post by deanCommie »

User23 wrote: post #45
deanCommie wrote: post #43

I moved from Russia to Canada as a kid and remember reading English-language books and being really confused by the word "ouch". I thought it would be really weird to say "ouch" when you accidentally stumble or hurt yourself - it felt completely unnatural. It was fascinating that different cultures have such different exclamations for pain! Well it turns out that it's not the case. Humans all make roughly the same so…

What do ducks say in Russia? In America it's quack and in Germany it's kwak.

Квак :) Just like the Germans

Re: Is huh a universal word? (2013)

#88

Post by pbhjpbhj »

govg wrote: post #79
pbhjpbhj wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They might be thinking of Xhosa; but I reckon I've heard a language expressed only with clicks (perhaps it's a vernacular?), and a whistle-language used by some mountain peoples (in Eastern Europe?).

Even Xhosa has some consonants that aren't clicks, afaik. Also, your comment leads to this interesting wiki article : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whistled_language

Yes, Xhosa isn't "all clicks", as you point out, I've a friend who can speak a little of it, but just my guess about a "click language" people might have half-heard of and assumed was all clicks.

I've been trying to recall where I heard a "pure clicking" language, I've a feeling it was a bushmen docu from Botswana - and it might just be that the hunters used words that only required clicks, or I misheard, etc..

Anyway, http://listverse.com/2018/08/10/10-extraordinary-languages-t... and https://www.britannica.com/topic/click-languages mention Damin, which sounds (no pun intended!) like it might have been mainly composed of clicking sounds?

Perhaps what I heard was slang/dialect tailored to the activity, which IIRC was hunting.

Re: Is huh a universal word? (2013)

#89

Post by ascar »

blattimwind wrote: post #78
ObscureScience wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There alot of those "are they necessary?" prefixes around. But isn't "ver" the same as "for", which I imagine is the same as "pro" from latin. Meaning either "before" or "causing" or "facilitating" or similar.

No, not really. It is used in many, many words, with no obvious intrinsic meaning of the prefix itself (and sometimes it's pretty much just redundant), although some clusters of meaning can be made out (often ver- signifies something negative or grave, for example). verstehen, vergehen (active), vergehen (passive), verdammen, verabreden, verfahren, verlaufen, verfestigen, verändern, verallgemeinern, veranschaulichen,…

I can't explain it well, but I somewhat have the feeling that "ver" also mostly indicates an irrevocable change. All of the words you listed can be used as a status for current conditions. The best example is probably "versterben".

It's hard to grasp, but I think "ver" has some subliminal meaning. The "ver" words feel different than their synonyms.

Re: Is huh a universal word? (2013)

#90

Post by meruru »

tokyodude wrote: post #29
meruru wrote: post #15

Earlier 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 don't use it when you are trying to say you don't know something, but you can use it as an answer to a question.

Q. What is that thing? A. Saa (dunno)

My guess is that the Italian "boh" is the same.

Post reply on HN