Listen to people say “huh?” in ten different languages. Via Youtube

A new study claims to have identified a universal word; a single term that is used and understood across all natural languages. And of all the beautifully poetic phrases and elegantly nuanced utterances across the multilingual lexicon, what would you guess is the word we have in common? Huh? 

No, that’s actually the word: “Huh?,” including the question mark. But if it doesn’t sound quite intellectual enough for you, you could always refer to it as “a short questioning interjection with the function of other-initiation of repair.”

In the study, published in the journal PLOS One, researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in the Netherlands wrote, “A word like Huh?—used as a repair initiator when, for example, one has not clearly heard what someone just said—is found in roughly the same form and function in spoken languages across the globe.”

Speaking English, you’ve no doubt noticed people interject with a succinct “huh?” to indicate they didn’t get what you just said or didn’t hear you properly, and need clarification. That’s a type of “repair initiator,” and it turns out other languages use the same syllable for the same purpose. In fact, all languages might.

The team at Max Planck, led by Mark Dingemanse, came to this conclusion after collecting samples from videotaped conversations in ten languages across five continents (English wasn’t actually one of them).

The different pronunciations of “huh?”  

After analyzing “interjection tokens” in the samples phonetically, they concluded that the form and function of  the world’s “huh?”s was similar enough to be considered universal. “In all languages investigated, it is a monosyllable with at most a glottal onset consonant, an unrounded low front central vowel, and questioning intonation,” they wrote. It’s worth noting that “questioning intonation” isn’t the same across all languages; of those included in the study, Icelandic and Cha’palaa (spoken by the indigenous Chachi people of Ecuador) use a falling intonation to indicate they’re asking a question. So while our “huh?” usually goes up in pitch toward the end of the syllable, theirs goes down.

Before the researchers could state with confidence that “huh?” is a universal word, however, they had to settle debate over whether it ‘s a word at all. We all speak a load of non-lexical nonsense (and, indeed, non-lexical but useful sounds) between legitimate words, and some studies have counted “huh?” among the noise.

But the team said that “huh?” was a word, because it’s sufficiently integrated into each language. They pointed to subtle differences to make their case: In Spanish, “huh?” has more of an “e” vowel sound, for instance, whereas in Cha’palaa it’s “a.” That’s a fine line to tread when you’ve just said it’s universal: essentially, the researchers say that “huh?” is similar enough across languages to be the same word, but different enough that it’s clearly integrated into each linguistic system. 

They also argued “huh?” must be a word as it isn’t like non-words such as cries or sneezes in that it’s not innate. Babies aren’t born going “huh?”; they have to learn it. “Indeed, to have such a word, specialized for clarifying matters of understanding, only makes sense when a fully functioning cooperative system of communication (i.e., human language) is already in place,” they wrote.

It might not be the most glamorous-sounding piece of vocabulary, but there’s a certain simple beauty to “huh?” and the unique role it plays in our day-to-day conversations. As the authors put it: “Only humans have communication systems in which complex thoughts can be expressed and communicative mishaps can be solved on the spot. Even a humble word like ‘Huh?’ can teach us a lot about our nature as ultrasocial animals.”

It’s also a beautiful and characteristically human irony that we should universally understand when someone hasn’t understood.