Why “huh” is near-universal

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Original photo by Svitlana Unuchko/ iStock At least 31 languages have a word very similar to "huh?" "Huh?" is a humble word, often a near-involuntary linguistic response, but behind this simple interrogatory palindrome is an extraordinary truth — it's also universal. According to research conducted in 2013 by the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in the Netherlands, a version of the word can be found in nearly every language on Earth. Researchers analyzed 31 languages, including Spanish, Mandarin, Icelandic, and Indigenous tongues. What they found was that every one included a word similar in both sound and function to the English "huh?" For example, in Mandarin it's a?, Spanish e?, Lao a?, and in Dutch he? No matter the language, the word includes a relaxed tongue, rising pitch, and if there's a sound before the vowel, it's an "h" or a glottal stop (a consonant sound made by closing the glottis, the space between the vocal folds). Although there is some variation in pronunciation, the word shows staggeringly little difference among languages compared to what might be expected. This raises the question: Is "huh?" even a word at all? Perhaps it's an innate interjection like a scream or a sneeze, or a non-lexical conversational sound like "ummm" or "aaaah." Yet the researchers noted several factors that point to "huh?" being a full-fledged word. For one, it's learned (as opposed to animal sounds like grunts), and children don't use the word until they've started speaking. And even languages without an "h" sound still create a close approximation of the word "huh." The researchers chock this linguistic similarity up to "convergent cultural evolution." In the animal kingdom, convergent evolution occurs when two animals develop the same traits due to their similar environment (for example, how sharks and dolphins have a similar streamlined look). In a linguistic sense, convergent evolution occurs when pressures in human conversation — like a lack of information that necessitates a need for clarification — create a universal requirement for a word that is quick and easy to pronounce. In time, all languages naturally arrived at more or less the same response to this need: "Huh?"   Greek is the oldest European language. Greek is the oldest European language.

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Created in 1887, __ was meant to be a universal secondary language for global communication. Created in 1887, __ was meant to be a universal secondary language for global communication. Numbers Don't Lie Percent of the world's languages that are considered endangered 40 Number of people who speak Tamil, one of the world's oldest languages 70 million+ Number of characters in the world's longest palindrome, the Finnish "saippuakivikauppias" ("soapstone vendor") 19 Year Robert Cawdrey published the first monolingual English dictionary, "Table Alphabeticall" 1604 Papua New Guinea is home to more than 850 languages, more than any other country. No nation compares in linguistic complexity to Papua New Guinea, an island nation with a population under 9 million but with more than 850 spoken languages. The island's numerous tongues derive from three main groups. The first and oldest is Papuan, which was brought by the island's first human inhabitants some 40,000 years ago and accounts for two-thirds of the country's languages. Next is the Austronesian language group, likely arriving from Taiwan 3,500 years ago. Then there are the country's recent colonial experiences and all the European languages that came with it, including English and German. The country's mountainous terrain also preserves many languages, as tribes (and their associated languages) remain isolated from the rest of the world. After independence in 1975, Papua New Guinea officially recognized three languages — English, Tok Pisin (an English-based creole), and Hiri Motu — but the decision has had little impact on the incredible linguistic diversity throughout the islands.   You might also like 8 Fascinating Foreign Words With No English Equivalent Thank you for supporting our advertisers. They help keep Interesting Facts free!

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