The one word that unites the world: ‘Huh?’
According to a new PLOS One study, huh is a universal word — pronounced similarly across languages, and carrying a similar meaning around the world.
What's your first reaction when you're confused, you misunderstand something or you didn't hear what someone said? 'Huh?'
It is estimated that up to 7,000 different languages are spoken around the world but we all share our confusion in a similar way. According to a new PLOS One study, huh is a universal word — pronounced similarly across languages, and carrying a similar meaning around the world.
Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in the Netherlands collected 196 recordings of native speakers of 10 different languages. In their recordings of casual conversations, they discovered that each language studied has a similar sounding version of the English word huh. All 10 languages had a one-syllable world consisting of "one vowel-like sound optionally preceded by a consonant-like sound," something like ''ah'' or ''eh.''
But why do all languages have this word? Lead researcher, Mark Dingemanse, explains:
We observe that this item fulfills a crucial need shared by all languages –the efficient signaling of problems of hearing and understanding– and we propose that its form is constrained by selective pressures in a conversational environment that is essentially the same in all languages.
Read the full study and findings at plosone.org.