Is “Huh?” a Universal Word? (2013) | Hacker News Reader

Is “Huh?” a Universal Word? (2013)

journals.plos.org

36 pointsantigizmo25 comments

This paper won the Ig Nobel prize this year. The authors were not able to go to the ceremony and sent a video in which every researcher uttered a "huh" - as hilarious as their research :)

> We sampled 31 languages from diverse language families around the world in this study, and we found that all of them have a word with a near-identical sound and function as English Huh?

Is there a table for this? I'm wondering, because I can't readily identify such word in my native language (although I have few candidates that may or may not fit the criteria...) At least, something like "huh" would sound absolutely alien if used in Russian. Phonetically closest I could remember would be "фух" [fuh], which has completely different meaning (sound for relief and/or tiredness, interchangeable with "уф" [uf]). And maybe "хе"/"хех" [he/heh], but that's omantopoeia for a snicker. Neither is normally pronounced with a questioning tone. Can't remember anything else sounding any close to "huh".

Just have a feeling that something like "eh?" or, possibly, "hm?" would be more universal. But I didn't any research, that's completely subjective perception.

The Russian example in the paper is something like "a?". Part of their hypothesis that makes "huh" a word is that it is calibrated to the phonetic system of its language.

> calibrated to the phonetic system of its language

The funny thing about that, though, is that English "huh" has a phonetic feature that's almost nonexistent in the language otherwise: a nasal vowel not followed by a nasal consonant.

>a nasal vowel not followed by a nasal consonant

Maybe depends on where in the English speaking world? I'm thinking of Scotland, Ireland, Australia, etc.

They seem to be using "что" for the russian question word, which serves the correct function in my experience. [1] However I'm not sure what the "a" interjection is supposed to be and I don't think I have heard it used in practice, although I'm not a native russian speaker.

[1] http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/figure/image?size=l...

"huh?" http://i.imgur.com/JQxm4YG.gif is «что?», «ась?» or (nasal vowel) «a?» in Russian

"huh?" may be pronounced as «ха-а?» ([hãː] sound)

Earlier discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8450769

Informational website by the authors with a good FAQ: http://huh.ideophone.org

I cannot think of a similar word in Hindi and other Indian languages (spoken by more than 1.2 Billion people). The closest is "Haan" in Hindi which literally means "yes" but is never used to express confusion over what the other person just said like huh is. Unless of course the person is influenced by English use of huh and has come to use it because of the usage in Western media.

हैं?

I guess that does sound close enough then.

In Italian you can say "eh?", but also the very non-universal "boh" for "I don't know".

It's a monosyllabic noise with a rising pitch to indicate a question on the end. Nothing to do with the word itself.

Surely rising pitch to indicate a question isn't universal?

In portuguese, that word would be "né?", or "ahn?" in a different context.

As a request to repeat/rephrase:

- Russian: "э?" or "а?" ("eh?" or "a?")

- Japanese: "え？" ("eh?")

- French: "Hein?" which is a nasalized sound without an English counterpart. Pronounce "Haaaaa" then let some air go through your nose by raising your uvula/lowering the back of your tongue a bit.

This voice synth is accurate: https://translate.google.com/#fr/fr/hein%3F (click on the speaker at the bottom left of the text box).

Edit: It's pretty close to its portugese counterpart: https://translate.google.com/#pt/fr/ahn%3F

We actually say both "ahn?" and "hein?". Sometimes we also use "hein" to start a sentence (usually when you are repeating a question)

"né" is short for "não é?" which means "isn't it?"

In my country it's "eee?" (prolonged "e" sound).

One joke about our local equivalent of a redneck, asks how one of them would say: "I'm sorry sir, I didn't catch that, can you repeat yourself please?"

To which the answer is:

- "Eee?"

No, it's not.

The year is 1998. I'm in Saskatchewan in mid-winter (why?) and I say to a three year-old Canadian toddler, "tastes pretty good, huh?" he stares at me like I have three heads. I remember where I am and repeat "tastes pretty good, eh?" and instantly he nods and smiles.

Universal my ass.

I agree. In my native language, "huh" means okay or affirmative.

Cute story, but I don't think this is an example of "huh" as a "repair initiator" (i.e. "what did you say?") that the paper investigates.

Huh?

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