“Huh” exists in all human languages, according to research (2019)
thelanguagenerds.com
thelanguagenerds.com
http://www.trs-80.org/level-1-basic/
Error Messages
Level I BASIC had three error messages: HOW?, WHAT?, and SORRY. User’s Manual for Level I described the error messages this way:
In general, a HOW? message means, “I understand your instructions, but they’re asking me to do something that’s impossible.”
The WHAT? error message, on the other hand, means, “I don’t understand your instructions — either the grammar is wrong or you’re using words that aren’t in my vocabulary.”
The third and final error message is SORRY. It means “Sorry — you have run out of memory locations and must either cut down the program size or purchase additional memory.”
Actually I kind of miss those days as you really felt like you were discovering things and it was possible to learn so much about the computer and know what almost everything was doing. Not that I want to go back to it, but it was quite enjoyable at the time.
Luxury ...
(I wish I'd had a modem ... I wonder what I could have connected to in Australia in 1978 ...)
> Huh? exhibits linguistic conventions that speakers need to learn in order to use the form properly. A learner of Spanish has to know that repair is initiated with the mid front unrounded vowel ‘‘e8’’, a learner of Cha’palaa has to know that the form is more like ‘‘aQ’’ with falling intonation, and a learner of Dutch has to know that a glottal fricative at onset is common: ‘‘h38’’. Its acquisition follows a normal trajectory, at least in American English-speaking children [37]. Second language learners’ reports confirm that the precise form of this interjection has to be learnt, and that intuitions are not necessarily a reliable guide in this process [38].
> Perhaps there is a continuum from non-linguistic vocalisations like sneezing and crying to prototypical conventional lexical items like bless you and pain [39]. Our evidence suggests that huh? is more on the word side of that continuum. Based on the fact that huh? is integrated in multiple linguistic subsystems and conventionalised in language-specific ways we conclude that huh? a lexical word.
It's an utterance like "oooh" and "hmm" and "haha" which are pretty much universal as well.
>They recorded bits of informal conversation from 31 dialects across 5 continents and suggested that the word ‘huh’ (and its variants) is possibly a universal repair initiator that exists in all languages, performs the same function and sounds roughly the same across languages.
It is apparent that they were aware that it isn't pronounced the same in all languages (because of course it isn't), but that it's a possible universal repair initiator that sounds similar. The title of the article is linkbait, I agree, but the article explains better.
I'm pretty sure it's not.
On the topic, sí seems to be yes, but backwards.
From Middle English ye, ȝea, ya, ȝa, from Old English ġēa, iā (“yea, yes”), from Proto-Germanic ja (“yes, thus, so”), from Proto-Indo-European yē (“already”)
Wiktionary about yes says
From Middle English yes, yis, from Old English ġēse, ġīse, ġȳse, ġīese (“yes, of course, so be it”), equivalent to ġēa (“yes", "so”) + sī(e) (“may it be”), from Proto-Indo-European yē (“already”). Compare yea.
So "yes", seeming so simple, was once a compound word.
For negation you could do the same verb-repeating, but add "non" to negate.
ng1: indeed, so what? ng2: huh? ng3: what? ng4: yeah, yes. ng~: nooo.
> There are several exceptions: in Greece, Iran, Turkey, Bulgaria,[2] Albania, and Sicily a single nod of the head up (not down) indicates a "no".
Though for Bulgaria at least it seems it's shifting with many people who lived abroad at some point(myself included) and have picked up the correct/more universal form. Which makes it worse: Now no one really knows whether you mean yes or no...
You can probably make yourself do it by saying out loud: "When I was young, I thought I understood everything." It's like an ongoing disagreement.
You can go pretty much anywhere on earth and say "huh? uh? ummm?" in response to something that you don't understand and people will get that you don't understand. Say another word, like "Great", and they might not know that you're affirming whatever they said.
And "yes" doesn't exist in all languages. Many languages require the speaker to repeat back part of the statement or the verb to affirm something.
In English, frogs croak; in Japanese, they kerokero. It’s clear that the same sound is being portrayed there, just broken up differently due to English having an alphabet where Japanese has an abugida.
Neither language’s encoding from the source “sound of a frog croaking” to a word is lossless, because humans can’t make that exact sound with their vocal cords; and so none of our systems of talking about sounds, be they written languages, spoken languages, or formalisms like IPA, can contain a good representation of the required movements. But both languages above get close enough that we can recognize the sound being referred to from its per-language encoding when we hear it spoken, and from there, know what the word is, even without speaking the relevant language.
The idea here is that there is a thing humans can communicate by making the sound of their language’s equivalent word for “huh?”, which speakers of all other human languages can equally recognize as having the same meaning as their own language’s word “huh?”, without understanding anything about the language being spoken. That communicability is what effectively makes the words “the same” word.
It’s not really that the word (written symbol; exact spoken phonemes) for “huh?” is the same between languages. It’s the abstract sound pattern that’s the same. Just like a frog’s croak, as an abstract sound pattern, is the same as any other frog’s croak, and unlike anything that’s not a frog’s croak. The difference is that all humans can make a “huh?” noise; and so we do get perfect mutual intelligibility out of it. We don’t manage to represent the “sound that ‘huh?’ makes” well in human languages; but when we say it, we still say it the “right” (mutually-intelligible) way nevertheless.
As a fan of languages I found the Arabic language fascinating. One thing I noticed was the "eh" sound used for a huh or what.
The older couple would argue frequently so I dare say some of the words may have been swear words.
Can we compile a list of more than 31 languages where this interjection sounds nothing like "huh"?
I'll start with Greek:
- Αποφασίσαμε να μετακομίσουμε στην Αλάσκα (We decided to move to Alaska)
- Ε; (/Ɂe/)
https://www.internationalphoneticalphabet.org/ipa-sounds/ipa...
- ə
"Euh" is typically the equivalent of "erm"; it signals hesitation [1]. It can also be uttered when a person is surprised.
> Huh is a very specific repair strategy that does not target some part of the statement but rather the statement as a whole.
... and I misread it :). I missed the word repair.
You are absolutely correct with the definition of "euh" - I usually use it when I have doubts or do not agree in a soft way (it then sounds more like heeuuuu...pfff).
As you two suggested, "huh" is tricky to adapt to as a native French speaker learning English, especially American English, because "huh" is not equivalent to any single easily muttered statements in French as far as I know. I would convey the meaning of "huh" in French with: - "ah ouais" (express that I didn't realize something) - "bah dis donc" (express soft surprise or shock) - "mouais" (express soft skepticism or disapproval)
Even those don't quite feel like the encompass the uses cases for "huh".
In American English, there is "Eh?" "Huh?" and "Eh?" are similar in function but sound different.
On the other hand, the article seems to say that it's specifically "huh" that's universal. Anyway, I'm just curious to see how many counter-examples we can find.
I’m not sure the h itself is really necessary for the main argument, but possibly it got dropped somewhere along the way? That’s pure speculation though, I haven’t seen any evidence for that in print.
Another giveaway is the awarding of the Ig Nobel Prize & then citation of that fact as evidence of the study’s credibility & importance at the end (masterful comedic move if it was intentional)
I’m not sure if it’s actually convergent evolution like the research paper implies my bet would that these predate humans by quite a bit, and some languages have a stronger onomatopoeic relationship between the base grunts and their question word.
Even in English ‘What’ has the basic huh in it, wha/ha it wouldn’t surprise me if the T was added to make it more distinct or allow for more tonal information be passed along such as surprise, displeasure, disappointment and even anger.
My non-linguistically educated opinion is that huh and and other grunts like a-ha (not the band) are probably much older than humans and they are universal just as female copulatory sounds are in humans and other primates (there is more to girls moaning in bed than just pleasure).
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Female_copulatory_vocalizati...
The question really is if a non-English or any second language speaker of your language understand “huh” as in not the word but the grunt, my bet would be yes.
The more commonly the thing comes up in conversation, the shorter the word tends to be.
Given how vast the pronunciations are (even in the examples they chose), I think they are creating an illusory correlation.
so the question is not whether words are pronounced the same, but whether they can be traced back through a lineage. where the sound does offer clues when taken as part of a larger tapestry. Another comment here says that the french huh is written (and presumably pronounced) hein. Well isn't that interesting? huh-hunt and hein-chien? (french uses irregular phonetic spelling because it used to be pronounced differently than today) Can we find a pattern of similar changes that would lead us to believe that the historical ancestor word of huh-hien was in use by an early tribe of people before their descendents separated deviated, physically and linguistically?
so, that's in essence a good piece of what linguists study; as in all areas of expertise, non-experts have difficulty contributing as their anecdotal experience has frequently already been catalogued and is part of the hypothesis.
The icelandic 'ha' and spanish 'ke' sound nothing alike and have no known relation.
The authors are trying to suggest that because everyone has these short responses that they must be related.. which only makes sense if you don't stop to think about how languages are formed.
I catch myself when in the U.S. saying "Mah?" to English speakers.
But "huh" exists, as does "ok" (though people are just as likely to say "בסדר" (b'seder).
It's interesting reading about the history of "ok" -- a very modern word with a traceable origin -- that now exists in all languages. Read Metcalf's book:
https://www.amazon.com/OK-Improbable-Story-Americas-Greatest...
[1] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Category:Wu_interjections
... But know it exists. I suppose more than one reader has pronounced aloud, in his native language, so it exits.
I suppose if you widen the concept of "is the same" enough, you'll find all sorts of words that exist in all languages. Sure, they may sound different, they may not really convey the same meaning ... but they exist!
Some part of me wonders when huh and haha were even added to some languages it wouldn’t surprise me if a lot of basic primate/human vocalizations in written forms are fairly new and only appeared as more complex fictional literature and heck even comic books/illustrated literature became a thing.
Would you say it’s more like the Canadian “eh” that can be tacked on to just about anything?
It can also be used to mean "isn't it", to ask for agreement, approval (very informal).
Example: il fait beau, hein? (The weather is good, isn't it?).
The proper way to say "isn't it" is "n'est ce pas", but it's very rarely used in practice, and English people speaking French are often caricaturized ending all their sentences with "n'est ce pas", which is not very far from reality in my experience ;)
(all the examples below are from real chat discussions)
Exemple 1: "Non mais sérieusement, c'est pas très malin, hein..."
Translates to: "Seriously, that's not really smart..."
"hein" here presses on the fact that the speaker is a bit impatient or annoyed.
Example 2: "Je suis pas forcément anti Facebook hein!"
Translates to: "I'm not necessarily against Facebook!"
Here it is used to communicate that there may have been some misunderstanding in the context of the discussion, and making clear that even if I said stuff negative toward facebook, I'm in fact not anti-facebook.
Example 3: "J'ai aucune expérience avec Haskell hein"
Translates to: "Just so you know, I have no experience with Haskell"
The "just so you know" is communicated through the use of "hein" at the end.
Example 4: "C'est de ma soeur, hein, pas de ma part"
Translates to: "To be clear it's from my sister, not me"
Here too, the "to be clear" is communicated through the use of "hein".
Be aware: the interpretation is purely subjective and depends on the context, and mostly the tone, so it's not that clearly communicated via text! Also, my french is actually swiss-french.
Hope that helps, and tell me if "huh" would communicate the same meanings :)
Person 1: "C'est pas correct, laisse moi te montrer comment ça marche. Clique sur ce bouton, et ensuite sur celui-ci. Tu vois?" Person 2: "Heeeeeeein!" (very long one that kind of sound like a sin wave from high pitch to lower pitch)
Translates to:
Person 1: "That's not correct, let me show you how that works. Click on this button, then that one. All good?"
Person 2: "Ooooooh, I see!"
Thanks again!
In TV shows people often speak French in a more dramatic/theater-like way, it's likely that they remove some details like that. I face the same issue as I'm learning German, the way people speak in German movies is a sanitized version that sounds more like drama (theater) than real dialogs.
If you listen to Twitch stream in French, or even some Youtube videos or some podcasts, or people on live TV (basically anything that isn't edited to cleanup the audio), I expect that you will find a lot of those interjections!
"Eh" in Spanish exists but is more to call for attention, kind of like "ahoy" http://udep.edu.pe/castellanoactual/e-eh-y-he-2/
This is like saying every language has a word for yes. It's pretty obvious.
> Very misleading headline.
It's hard to know what a better headline would be. It does cover quite well what the content of the original paper is asserting, and while it's not exact that the utterance we transcribe as "huh" exists as exactly that in all human languages, nevertheless, they cover that question in the paper, and the sense of their conclusions is fairly well conveyed by this headline, even if it's not absolutely precisely true.
> The exact word "huh?" does not exist in every language, it's more that every language has a word that functions like the English language word "huh".
The original paper seems to be saying more than what you are asserting here. Yes, there is something of that, and in places it's not entirely clear exactly what they're asserting in that regard, but even so, there is something in the research. It would be interesting to see people try to build on the research rather than just saying "Well, it's rubbish, isn't it. Clearly wrong."
> This is like saying every language has a word for yes. It's pretty obvious.
Do you think it's obvious that every word has a language for "Yes"? If so, that's why research is needed, because what people think is obvious isn't always true, and this claim is one of them. Not all languages have a word for "Yes".
Excuse me? "¿qué?" (ke) literally means "what?". That is like saying "what?" is the English equivalent of "huh?".
The Spanish equivalent would be "¿Eh?", which is also interpreted as not having heard well, triggering the repetition.
Had to read the paper to find this addressed:
> Huh? exhibits linguistic conventions that speakers need to learn in order to use the form properly. A learner of Spanish has to know that repair is initiated with the mid front unrounded vowel “e↗”,
Naturally people literally do make the "huh" sound in some sort of feedback loop, but I can't be the only one who interprets it like this....
I can't find it back right now (on mobile) but it's warmly recommended and not too long.
(it's not really that simple, but it illustrates the point)
They sure sound similar and quite possibly related to me.
That might sound counter intuitive, until you remember that languages, like people, don't actually have a family tree. They have a family graph. For cataloging and quick classification purposes we pretend languages can be classified in trees, but the actual relations between languages both over time and in the moment, are highly connected, weighted graphs.
If “huh” is the standard for a word then also laughing words like “haha” are also universal.
I also read in the source: "Therefore we collected data from recordings of naturally occurring informal conversations in a sample of 10 languages from 5 continents, varying fundamentally in terms of phonology, word structure, and grammar (languages 1–10 in Figure 1)". That sounds pretty far from "all languages" as in the title.
I don't think the point is that it would sound like "huh" in all languages, but rather that there is a word used like "huh" in all languages. "Va" definitely fits, as you even said "we have 'va'", proving the point of the article.
The word “huh” exists in all human languages, according to research
So I've given up even trying to put any thought into the title ... if the article seems like it would, should, or could be interesting to the HN community, I post it.
I've been trained not to put any work into it.
this modding style has definitely discouraged me from submitting articles here with good content but unfortunate headlines.
"Huh" and variants exist additionally in quite a few as well.
===================================== Original:
Huh ... more discussion than upvotes, I suspect this will trigger the "flame-war" penalty and disappear from the front page, possibly within minutes (10:42 BST)
Shame, I thought this was an interesting discussion. If you agree and haven't done so already, your upvoted is needed to keep this on the front page. If you disagree, let it get buried.
EDIT: as I say in a reply below, I'm just interested in the discussion. If you don't want to give me the karma that's fine, just find some comments of mine and downvote them in balance.
If people want to keep the item but don't want to give me the votes, feel free to downvote one of my comments. I don't care about the karma, I wanted to see the discussion develop and evolve.
Thanks for the information ... today I learned.
[1] I guess by email, but it may be a SMS or a big red blinking light in the headquarter.
Also, perhaps they get the warning when a submission pass a lower threshold and the penalty is automatically applied with higher threshold.