
“Huh” exists in all human languages, according to research (2019) - ColinWright
https://thelanguagenerds.com/this-is-the-one-word-that-exists-in-all-human-languages-according-to-research/
======
DonHopkins
Reminds me how the TRS-80 Level 1 Model 1 BASIC interpreter had just three
error messages:

[http://www.trs-80.org/level-1-basic/](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.”

~~~
graton
Ah my very first computer to program was the Model I. The fun days of writing
programs in BASIC and later assembly language, using a tape cassette machine
to load and save programs/data, and using a 300 bps modem to connect to a BBS.

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.

~~~
ColinWright
Modem? Modem ???

Luxury ...

 _(I wish I 'd had a modem ... I wonder what I could have connected to in
Australia in 1978 ...)_

------
codeflo
The researchers discuss the question whether “huh” is a word or just a grunt
in the linked paper.
([https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/jo...](https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0078273&type=printable)):

> 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.

~~~
gridlockd
It's definitely not a _word_ in all languages, probably not in most of them.

It's an utterance like "oooh" and "hmm" and "haha" which are pretty much
universal as well.

~~~
r0rshrk
Can the people who're downvoting the above comment mention whether it's
factually incorrect ?

~~~
Carpetsmoker
It certainly has more than a whiff of "HN commenter solves question experts
have been discussing for some time" to it.

------
axegon_
I'm not so sure about this... I speak 3 languages and it does exist in only
two of them. The closest you can get to "huh" is probably "eh" in the last
one, though that is still fairly close. Mind you, those are all European
languages so they probably have influenced one-another significantly over the
centuries (even the Slavic language of the bunch). I guess "huh" might have
been transferred over to other parts of the world during the time of the
colonial empires, making it more common. But all languages? I Doubt it. I
happened to be chatting with an old friend who is originally from Lebanon and
she said that's not the case in Arabic for instance(with a grain of salt since
she also says she's anything but fluent in Arabic).

~~~
tetromino_
The table in the article considers "eh" (like in Spanish) and "a" (like in
Russian) as equivalent to huh in a given language.

~~~
fcvarela
This is like saying 'yes' exists in all languages because there's an
equivalent in every language... It's... a bit clikbaity

~~~
cgsullivan
Irish doesn't have words for "yes" and "no" \-- answers must echo the verb:
"Are you okay?" "Am." "Did you tell him to come over?" "Didn't tell."

~~~
DonaldFisk
Unsurprisingly, it's similar in Scottish Gaelic and Welsh. Mandarin and
Cantonese (and probably other Sinitic languages) don't either, with much the
same arrangement as the Celtic languages.

~~~
AnotherGoodName
No Shi? I had no idea about Mandarin.

~~~
lopmotr
Shi means "is", not "yes" in Mandarin.

~~~
singularity2001
who sais yes isn't a contraction of i'is

~~~
r0rshrk
Surprisingly, this is partially true. It's a contraction but an older one.

[https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/yes](https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/yes)

------
YeGoblynQueenne
>> 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.

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/)
    

Here's an ipa chart where you can click the symbols to get the sounds:

[https://www.internationalphoneticalphabet.org/ipa-
sounds/ipa...](https://www.internationalphoneticalphabet.org/ipa-sounds/ipa-
chart-with-sounds/)

~~~
mistersquid
I don't speak or read Greek, but I do want to note that this counterexample
does not prove there is no "huh"-like repair initiator in Greek.

In American English, there is "Eh?" "Huh?" and "Eh?" are similar in function
but sound different.

~~~
YeGoblynQueenne
The "h" sound (/ɦ/, I think) does not exist in Greek, but I agree that "Eh"
sounds closer to the Greek exclamation than "huh".

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.

~~~
smogcutter
Funnily enough, Ancient Greek did have a leading h- sound. It’s since
disappeared, along with tonal accents and some vowel sounds.

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.

------
UperSpaceGuru
I’m wondering if this isn’t satirical. English is my third language & this
word in particular confounded me & still does to some Degree. In my head I’m
always trying to translate between languages & cultures & the word “huh” to me
seems uniquely western.

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)

------
dogma1138
It’s pretty clear that there are some grunts/vocalizations that are shared
amongst all humans (and possibly primates) these would yes/agreement,
no/disagreement, and question mark/surprise those aren’t language dependent.

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...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Female_copulatory_vocalizations)

~~~
TomMarius
What is "co" [tso] in my language and people here are making the same
arguments with it

~~~
dogma1138
Well depending on the tonal formalization of it at least how I would pronounce
it would probably be very similar to huh just a non-guttural version of it
that may have evolved because the language itself is non-guttural.

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.

------
kjaftaedi
All languages tend to use shorter words for things that are more common.

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.

~~~
fsckboy
french chien, german hund, italian cano, and portuguese cao are all dog. They
all have vastly different pronunciations, but they all trace their origins to
a single proto-indo-european word. And in english, we use that same word to
mean hunt, because that's what dogs do for us.

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.

~~~
mc32
Interestingly, dog is unrelated to that root proto-indoeuropean word.

~~~
Accacin
I can’t remember where I read it but apparently the etymology of the word dog
is not known. Old English used hund (or something similar) and sometime
between then and now ‘dog’ turned up. Of course we could still say hound and
people would most likely understand you meant dog.

------
dhosek
Kind of reminds me of the satirical article that I've been contemplating
writing for a few years about trying to recreate the language of Eden by
finding words that are the same in all languages. It would assert that the
thread Adam and Eve used to sew their fig leaves must have been polyester
since the word is universal.

------
allendoerfer
Living in an international non English speaking city, I have noticed more and
more people not only using English words when there are perfectly fine,
sometimes even shorter local synonyms, but also English sounds embedded into
the local language (e.g. "huh?" or "nom nom").

------
fortran77
In Israel I'm more likely to say "מה" (Mah? literally "what") than "הא" "Huh".

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...](https://www.amazon.com/OK-Improbable-Story-Americas-
Greatest/dp/0199892539/)

------
zasz
I have grown up with Shanghainese as my second language, and never in my life
have I, my parents, or my brother ever uttered anything remotely like "huh."
Seems like a silly bit of clickbait.

~~~
yorwba
I checked Wiktionary's category of Wu interjections [1] and 呵 (Wiktionary
romanization hu (T1), Sinological IPA /hv̩ʷ⁵³/) "5\. Exclamation particle for
expressing surprise." [2] seems like it would fit their loose pattern.
(Although it might be that this particular meaning isn't actually used in
Shanghainese.)

[1]
[https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Category:Wu_interjections](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Category:Wu_interjections)

[2]
[https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E5%91%B5](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E5%91%B5)

------
7373737373
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_semantic_metalanguage](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_semantic_metalanguage)

------
rsecora
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.

~~~
lazyant
Spanish equivalent I think it would be more like "hmm".

"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/](http://udep.edu.pe/castellanoactual/e-eh-y-he-2/)

~~~
yellowapple
And meanwhile, the difference between "hmm" and "huh" is pretty much whether
or not your mouth is open when you make the sound. Seems plausible that even
these might be related.

------
chadlavi
Very misleading headline. 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".

This is like saying every language has a word for yes. It's pretty obvious.

~~~
ColinWright
Well, except that not every language has a word for "yes". If in doubt, search
elsewhere in the thread.

~~~
chadlavi
Thanks for the 100% HN-style "whatabout" nitpick that's completely beside the
point of my comment! It has advanced the conversation and enriched all our
lives.

~~~
ColinWright
OK, well, let's reply more "in depth" to your comment.

> _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".

------
ASalazarMX
> Spanish: ke

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↗”,

------
timonoko
Best way to study this is to write the English "huh" into Google translate and
observe how this "expression of scorn, anger, disbelief, surprise, or
amusement" is vocalized in different languages. Comparing various written
forms is just stoopid. You can clearly see it is the same wide-mouthed grin
which produces same wide back-vowel [ɛ] or "ä". "H" is just the associated
btreath-sound.

------
monadic2
Do people interpret 'huh' as a literal phonetic? I've always interpreted it to
mean a number of different sounds people make—unlike, say, "oh" which is a
literal sound associated with english.

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....

------
BurningFrog
Confusion is the most universal human condition.

------
skrebbel
Their Ig Nobel prize acceptance speech is excellent.

I can't find it back right now (on mobile) but it's warmly recommended and not
too long.

~~~
INTPenis
Huh?[1]

1\.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nRsL9kCuZaA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nRsL9kCuZaA)

------
prmph
I'd expect many more words to exist in all languages. It would seem that there
is a core set of words that are absolutely fundamental to any sort of spoken
communication (yes/no, for example), and would be very surprised if this word
"huh" is the only one so far found to exist in all languages.

~~~
hashmush
Isn't Mandarin a typical example without yes and no? You answer affirmatively
but repeating the verb and negatively by negating the verb.

(it's not really that simple, but it illustrates the point)

~~~
deadwing0
In some situations, yes, but you can say yes and no. 是 (shì, roughly
translates to "is" in most situations) and 不是 (bú shì, no is). It's definitely
not as cut and dry as the English yes and no, and it gives Chinese kids hell
when they're learning English (I taught there for 6 years).

~~~
hashmush
Definitely and to add to that, to my understanding (better than basic, far
from fluent), 是 is more of a fallback verb following the same pattern than it
is a translation of "yes".

------
TheRealPomax
That's quite the click bait, given that the article then goes on to count
words that don't even remotely sound like "huh", like "eh" or "a", just so
they can claim it exists in every language. That's just straight up "not doing
linguistics".

~~~
yellowapple
Say all three of those words out loud. Do you really think they "don't even
remotely sound like" each other? That they can't possibly have come from a
common ancestor word that's been morphed over thousands of years?

They sure sound similar and quite possibly related to me.

~~~
TheRealPomax
As someone who speaks five languages and took quite a number of linguistics
courses: they don't sound the same at all if you pronounce them the way
they're pronounced in their respective languages. And no, the further back in
time you go, the likelihood of single ancestors giving rise to multiple
descendants drops dramatically, and instead the likelihood of distinct roots
giving rise to words that temporarily (because languages constantly change)
sound the same skyrockets.

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.

------
trishmapow2
Link to full article (PDF):
[https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/jo...](https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0078273&type=printable)

------
sidntrivedi
I don't think there's a word like "Huh" in Hindi.

~~~
entha_saava
Neither in South Indian languages.

------
a_imho
The word is ‘huh’.

~~~
zerr
Isn't it "juj" in Spanish? :)

~~~
iagovar
We don't say that in spain, the closest would be "eh?" or "ah?", maybe in
latin american they use something I'm not aware of.

------
astrobe_
Are there equivalents in sign languages?

------
zwischenzug
Surprised no one has mentioned gynantonix

------
j7ake
I was thinking “mom “ and “papa”.

If “huh” is the standard for a word then also laughing words like “haha” are
also universal.

~~~
capableweb
The physical sound of "haha" might be the same everywhere (to some degree,
people laugh differently obviously) but different languages write "haha"
different. Spanish: "jaja" or "jeje", Japanese: "wwwww"

~~~
deadwing0
In simplified Chinese: 哈哈哈！

------
DonHopkins
My immediate reflexive reaction to reading the title was "huh"!

------
zan5hin
Huh.

------
bishalb
I would say "haha" exists in all languages but what do I know?

~~~
Cthulhu_
That's not a word though, that's an emotive sound, like crying. Sure, "haha"
is a word you can use on the internet but it's the English interpretation of
the sound laughter makes.

~~~
yorwba
Most languages probably have an "interpretation of the sound laughter makes"
and across the languages I know it's a fricative-vowel syllable repeated
several times. That's about the level of similarity shown for 'huh?' across
languages in the study.

~~~
chownie
'Huh?' is significant because it forms a communicative purpose, it forms a
request from listener to speaker to recall the previous spoken phrase. The
study is showing that all languages have a sound for that purpose.

------
asimjalis
What about ma the word for mother? That seems more universal.

~~~
lopmotr
The Georgian word for mother sounds more like "dayda", so no, not really.

------
blablablerg
Well, 'huh' is basically a grunt.

~~~
9nGQluzmnq3M
In the same way that TCP/IP wouldn't work without ACK/NACK, grunts are an
important part of linguistics:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backchannel_(linguistics)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backchannel_\(linguistics\))

------
dwighttk
...all languages that we checked.

------
ggm
Que?

~~~
pwdisswordfish2
I’m sorry, he’s from Barcelona.

------
GreenHeuristics
They must have missed Swedish. We don't have 'huh', we have 'va'.

~~~
ejolto
Look at the table, non of the words are literally "huh", but they convey the
same meaning. The title is confusing, I had the same thought as you at first.

~~~
flurdy
Yeah the table has an Icelandic example: "Ha". Though I only lived in Sweden
for a year so I can't remember but Norwegian has the word "Hæ" which certainly
has the same meaning as the English "huh"

------
idoby
Not sure I consider "huh" to be an actual _word_. If so, I'm pretty sure
blowing raspberry also exists in all human languages, and some non-human.

------
LargoLasskhyfv
Hä? Watt?

------
thih9
I’d edit the title, current one seems clickbait. Maybe:

The word “huh” exists in all human languages, according to research

~~~
ColinWright
In the past I've edited titles, carefully crafting them to give a better
indication of the content, only to have people complain that the title has
been changed, and subsequently to have the mods change it back.

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.

~~~
leeoniya
same. kind of absurd that when you try to un-editorialize some clickbaity bs
into a tldr; it gets mod-reverted to the original vague crap.

this modding style has definitely discouraged me from submitting articles here
with good content but unfortunate headlines.

------
ColinWright
_EDIT 2:_ TIL that the flame-war detector triggers a review by the mods, so
this comment is irrelevant, and wrong. I was going to remove it and leave the
thread tidier than it was, but I can't, probably because it has replies. So it
will remain ... please ignore it and carry on. As you were.

===================================== _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.

~~~
yorwba
If the flame-war detector is triggered, the mods get alerted and decide
whether they're actually dealing with a flame war or not. No need to beg for
upvotes.

~~~
ColinWright
Is that really true? I've not seen them say so, and it's never come up when
I've discussed it with them. I'll have to ask ... thanks for the
information/suggestion.

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.

~~~
yorwba
Dang has said so many times:
[https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20flamewar%20detector%20review&sort=byDate&type=comment)

~~~
ColinWright
You're right, I hadn't seen that. I'll remove my comment.

Thanks for the information ... today I learned.

~~~
gus_massa
IIUC the penalty is applied automatically but they get a warning [1] and then
they check if the penalty is correctly applied and may revert it.

[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.

