I have never seen that word huh written or pronounced in Spanish, French o Italian.
... But know it exists. I suppose more than one reader has pronounced aloud, in his native language, so it exits.
... But know it exists. I suppose more than one reader has pronounced aloud, in his native language, so it exits.
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!
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.
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!
"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/