North West Frontier

A simple three letter word and a question mark got me beaten up.

I was a secondary school student from a small town on a field trip for a few days based in Manchester. What I lacked in streetwise traits I more than adequately made up for in manners, or so I thought.

So, when waiting in a queue outside a Mancunian fish and chip shop I responded to a direct question from a tough looking youth (probably backed up by a gang) with the common “huh?”

I felt that was a sufficient answer to a mumbled gravelly toned question without giving away that I was not from that city or a bit of a geeky wimp.

I was wrong and “huh?” rather than prompt the same question in a clearer voice was seen as an act of aggression and so was established a not so fond memory of the English North West.

A recent academic study should, I suppose, give me some comfort and closure in that after a systematic comparison of 10 spoken languages from 5 continents it was found that a word like ‘Huh?’ is a universal word.

I could therefore have been beaten up in not just Manchester but also in Milan, Munich, Marseille and just about every country in the world.

In technical linguistic terms “huh?” is used as a ‘repair initiator’ when someone has not clearly heard what someone else just said.

The study by academics funded through the European Research Council essentially defined that Huh? is a word in that it meets the criteria of being a conventional lexical sign which must be learnt.

“Huh?” is linguistic in nature rather than being a mere grunt or non-lexical sound.

It is fascinating from the research that all languages should have such a word as “Huh?” and why its form should be so similar across languages. It was observed that the word fulfilled a crucial need shared by all languages in the efficient signalling of problems of hearing and understanding.

In thirty-one languages around the world, the interjection for other-initiated repair appeared to be strongly similar. However, written sources were rarely explicit about the precise form, meaning, and use of interjections.

The most reliable way to study a conversational interjection was by examining cases of actual use. 

Therefore the study 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. The languages were Siwu (a minority language spoken in Ghana), Italian, Mandarin Chinese, Spanish, Cha’palaa (a minority language spoken in Ecuador), Icelandic, Lao (spoken in Laos, Thailand, and Cambodia), Dutch, and Murriny Patha (an Australian Aboriginal language).

A truly comparative basis for research was the exact same conversational environment across languages that of other-initiated repair where:

A)   one participant produces a turn at talk,

B)   the other then signals some trouble with this turn, and  

C)   finally the first produces a next turn which aims to solve the trouble, usually by means of repetition and/or modification.

In some languages the interjection was also found for instance to mark surprise or to pursue a response.

Conversation moves along quickly making reliable ways of signalling potential misheard or misunderstood speech vital. Without such linguistic tools we would constantly fail to stay ‘on the same page’ in social interaction.

“Huh? “ is a small word but an essential part of our everyday communication. 

I find some comfort from that. 

I am not so sure, however, if the youth who beat me up all of those 35 years ago will have experienced the same warm and fuzzy feeling.