Even if you are not a native speaker of English, you probably don’t need a translation for “Huh?” It appears that the word, or a very similar form of it, is used in most of the languages in the world.

 

Until now, there was very little written about 'huh' in linguistic literature. It was thought to be an unimportant feature of language. Thinking there was perhaps more to it, some researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in the Netherlands decided to look into the matter. They began analyzing recordings of ten different languages, including Spanish, Chinese, Icelandic and indigenous languages from Australia, South America and Africa to see whether these other languages had a similar word with the same function. They discovered that in every one of the languages, speakers would use roughly the same sound to ask for a clarification or when they wanted their counterpart to repeat something.

 

Generally, when words are similar in different languages they share the same origin. These are called cognates. But most of the languages in the study were completely unrelated to the others. The word “huh” in these languages could not have been a cognate. This meant that “huh” is a very different kind of word.

 

The scientists suspect that the same sound is used because it is the most efficient way to ask for someone to explain something further or to clarify their statement. They compare it to convergent evolution. Convergent evolution is when similar environments cause the evolution of similar features in unrelated species.

 

How do you say “huh” in your native language? Feel free to let me know in our Facebook comments section.