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Mmmhmmm

February 5, 2013 Written by The Language Nerd

Dear Language Nerd,

These questions people are asking you have been easy. Chump change. Child’s play. I’m not impressed. Here’s a REAL question for you, and answer it if you can! Why do we say “uh-huh” for yes and “uh-uh” for no?

Edgar F.

***

“I can answer that question in eight sentences!”

“I can answer that question in five sentences!”

“I can answer that question in two sentences!”

“I can answer that question in ONE WORD!”

“Answer! That! Question!”

***

Dear Edgar,

Intonation.

Yours,

The Language Nerd

Got a language question? Ask the Language Nerd! asktheleagueofnerds@gmail.com

…
….
..

Alright, I’ll give you more than that. Just cuz I’m so nice. Intonation is the term for the pitch we use when we speak. When we ask a tag question in English (“She went, didn’t she?”), our pitch rises sharply at the end. When we go through a list, apples bananas kiwi grapes, our intonation drops on the last word. This helps the listener understand when we’re done with the list, and we use it in more subtle ways too, to delineate phrases in a sentence.

“Uh-huh” and “uh-uh” belong the linguistic group called fillers (ok, sometimes the linguistic terms are pretty straightforward, is that a crime?). This includes lots of other semi-word noises, like “uh,” “yeah,” “mmmm,” “mmhmm,” and so on. These noises are interesting for a lot of reasons (one is that linguists will argue like the dickens over whether they should count as words, and if so, how). None of them have a very strong presence or are pronounced very clearly. They’re basically empty sounds used to carry intonation. The difference between “uh-huh” and “uh-uh” looks tiny if you spell them out, but in practice they’re really “high-pitched agreeing noise” and “low-pitched contradicting noise,” and sound totally distinct from each other.

Here’s an interesting side note: fillers’ functions usually relate to how long they are. Short fillers, like “um” or “uh,” usually are used by a person who wants to keep talking, to say “wait, let me think of this word, don’t cut me off, I’m not done, uh, uh…” Multi-syllable fillers are usually used by the person listening, to say “I hear you, this is my reaction, but you keep going, mmhmm, uh-huh.” Not always, but often.

Easiest.

Question.

Ever.

Yours,

The Language Nerd

Got a language question? Ask the Language Nerd! asktheleagueofnerds@gmail.com
Or: Twitter @AskTheLeague / facebook.com/asktheleagueofnerds

Props to Nigel Ward, my main source for today. His article “Pragmatic Functions of Prosodic Features in Non-Lexical Utterances” is available here.

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