Uh-huh? Uhn-uh?

May 17, 2019 4:13 AM

Do any languages other than English use "uh-huh" and "uhn-uh" to mean "yes" and "no"? Do all English dialects use them?
posted by clawsoon to Writing & Language (23 answers total)

In British English I've heard the "yes" version used quite a bit, but almost never the "no" version.
posted by pipeski at 4:36 AM on May 17, 2019 [1 favorite]

In Australian English you might hear uh uh for no. You won't hear uhn uh though, unless any Australians with better hearing want to tell me I'm wrong. That's a subtle difference.
posted by deadwax at 5:05 AM on May 17, 2019 [4 favorites]

Japanese has an interjection, "un," which is a casual affirmative like "uh-huh" or "yeah." I can't think of any corresponding negative.
posted by Faint of Butt at 5:12 AM on May 17, 2019

In German you would spell these differently, but pronounce them identically or at least very similarly. The meaning of the sounds is the same.
posted by amf at 5:28 AM on May 17, 2019 [2 favorites]

...namely hmm-hmm (yes) and 'um-'um (no) (or almost ung ung, especially when you hear kids on the playground being emphatic). Regional differences apply.
posted by Namlit at 5:41 AM on May 17, 2019

> Japanese has an interjection, "un," which is a casual affirmative like "uh-huh" or "yeah." I can't think of any corresponding negative.

A slightly longer “u” sound (ううん as opposed to うん) is a negative.
posted by Gev at 5:41 AM on May 17, 2019

Do all English dialects use them?

Yeah, nah.

Here in Australia you'll hear both "uh-uh" and "nuh-uh" for No, generally with connotations of "don't do that". I can't ever recall hearing an Australian say "uhn-uh" which sounds deeply weird to me.

"Yep" is way more commonly heard than "uh-huh", which is generally restricted to people who seem to think that deliberately trying to sound American makes them cooler.
posted by flabdablet at 5:42 AM on May 17, 2019 [4 favorites]

Nah. The negative ("uhn uh" or "uh uh") is not commonly heard in Ireland.
posted by DarlingBri at 5:52 AM on May 17, 2019

Naw, ken, nae in Scotland.

I mean, "uh-huh" would be understood, and if someone was agreeing with you with their mouth full they might say a more hummy-sounding "mnn-hmm". But aside from that you'll get an "aye" or "yep" or "yeah" or whatever.

As for "uhn-uh", I genuinely don't think I've ever heard it.
posted by Vortisaur at 5:54 AM on May 17, 2019 [1 favorite]

At least before 1960 in the Netherlands, it was uncommon. We moved to the US around then, so my brother and I picked it up in school and started using it, but my mother claimed not to understand us (or tell the difference between the two) and forbade us to use those sounds.
posted by beagle at 6:38 AM on May 17, 2019 [2 favorites]

I remember our group being pretty confused in French university oral classes by how disapproving our lectrice sounded, before we realised her "uh-uh" meant "d'accord" (sure, yep, okay, good).
posted by lokta at 6:40 AM on May 17, 2019 [3 favorites]

Do not be confused by Tagalog/Filipino speakers who say "o o" (which sounds more like uh uh, but not quite) which means yes.
posted by wellred at 6:46 AM on May 17, 2019

Yeah I'm having a hard time understanding what sounds people are intending by the spelled-out letters here, since different dialects have different ways of doing that too. So for reference my (midwestern, American) English has more emphasis on the melody than anything else: two rising tones mean "yes" and maybe your mouth is open and it comes out as "uh-huh" or it's closed and it's "mm-hmm". Two descending tones mean "no" and again, vowels shmowels. On reflection it does also matter a bit whether they're separated by 'h' (yes) or glottal stop (no).

Then there's a second type of "no" that means more like "I disagree" or "don't touch, child, that's hot" that uses three pitches in its melody: low-high-middle. I think that's similar to what flabdablet described?
posted by traveler_ at 7:08 AM on May 17, 2019 [1 favorite]

Korean has 응 which is usually pronounced like the second “uh” in the positive version of “uh uh”. Interesting side note, you’ll see Koreans playfully use % as a kind of stand in for 응 in text chats and what not.

I don’t know of any Korean equivalent to the negative version.
posted by forforf at 7:23 AM on May 17, 2019 [3 favorites]

Not sure if this will help anyone, but I believe the sounds being described are roughly [ˌʌˈhʌ] and [ˈʔʌ̃ˌʔʌ̃] (IPA). The latter is made up of sounds that have no standard spelling in English; unh-uh is more conventional than descriptive.

(There is also the "childish" [ˌnʌ̃ˈʔʌ̃ː], used specifically to contradict a previous uh-huh/em>.)
posted by aws17576 at 7:42 AM on May 17, 2019 [7 favorites]

Now that I think about it, uh-huh is certainly nasalized as well. Sorry for the bad transcription -- won't derail further!
posted by aws17576 at 7:57 AM on May 17, 2019

I'm from the US (Midwest but I've lived all over) and I can't recall ever in my life hearing an "n" sound in the "no" version. It's "UH uh" to my ear.
posted by quiet coyote at 8:10 AM on May 17, 2019 [2 favorites]

I believe that, in the US Midwest, "uhn-uh" is what one says to dogs and small children who are getting into things they ought not.
posted by teremala at 8:21 AM on May 17, 2019

For everyone who's getting tripped up over the 'n' in "unh-uh": it's not there to indicate a literal 'n' sound. Like aws17576said, it's being used to indicate that the vowel is nasalized.

I think it's written that way mainly to make the written word distinguishable from "uh-huh".
posted by henuani at 8:36 AM on May 17, 2019 [5 favorites]

When I moved in the 70s from Oregon to California, I frequently assented with "mmm-hmm" and people mistook it for "hmm?" and therefore repeated themselves.

In my case, there may be some influence of my mother, who had a speech impediment from a poorly-repaired cleft palate. But I wanted to offer the data point.
posted by Glomar response at 8:47 AM on May 17, 2019

Response by poster: Here (NSFW) is a song which has the pronunciation of "uhn-uh" that I'm thinking of, though they spell it "uh-uh". I hear just the tiniest bit of an "n" sound as the back of the tongue comes up to stop the first "h".

aws17576, if you're able to listen to the song and say exactly which sounds are being made, that would be fantastic.

That said, I think I have the answer, based on the full collection of replies: These specific words are not at all universal, but multiple languages do have similar short informal words that you can use, as Vortisaur put it above, to say yes or no with your mouth full.

Thanks, everybody!
posted by clawsoon at 10:25 AM on May 17, 2019 [1 favorite]

I hear the affirmative version in Latin American Spanish a lot.
posted by turkeyphant at 7:41 PM on May 17, 2019 [1 favorite]

aws17576, if you're able to listen to the song and say exactly which sounds are being made, that would be fantastic.

I don't have a particularly trained ear for this, but I hear it as [ˈʔʌ̃ˌʔʌ̃], just like my transcription earlier in the thread. [ʔ] is a glottal stop (also heard in uh-oh [ˈʔʌˌʔoʊ]). [ʌ̃] is like the u in bun, which has a nasal release as though it were leading into [n] (but I don't think an [n] is actually articulated here). The first syllable also has a higher pitch than the second, which I don't know how to transcribe.

Before I clicked, I thought your track was going to be Cell Block Tango!
posted by aws17576 at 12:17 PM on May 19, 2019