Pretty much the title. Also curious if other languages have similar non-word sounds for negation/affirmation.
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I can help answer part two of your question as I recently studied it in my Japanese class… In Japanese, there is not ‘uhn-uh’ and ‘uh-huh’, it is ‘u-uhn’ and ‘un’, respectively. The ‘no’ sound is an extended ‘u’ with an inflection twisting sound similar to how American English might make an ‘I don’t know’ sound, ending with an ‘n’ sound. All in all, not too dissimilar. However the ‘yes’ sound is only the single note ‘un’.
Interesting thing that Ukrainian and Russian languages also have exactly the same uh-huh and mm-hmm. There is even a word for the first one – “угу” or “ага”. So probably it has the same origin? Never thought about it before
I’m sorry uhn uh is not a thing. Never has been never heard of it. It’s uh-uh or uh-huh. You can also say nuh-uh for the no instead of uh-uh.
I don’t know if it’s copied from other languages, but we have the exact same sounds in Greek.
Generally speaking, it’s not so much the word said as it is the inflection at the end. Pitch goes up, that’s a yes. Pitch goes down, that’s a no.
I don’t know if it’s copied from other languages, but we have the exact same sounds in Greek.
This has no backing and is a personal theory. It’s about the feeling behind the sound. Excited sound sounds higher pitch. The huh part of the uh huh goes up in pitch where uh uh sounds lower and slower and less willing to do so.
Think on body language. You don’t wanna do something, low toned groan with physical drooping.
Excited and ready, higher pitch squee or yay with physical alertness.
we do that too in latinamerican spanish, i’m from Chile and here ajá means yes and um-um means no (sorry for the ambiguity but I don’t know how to write such peculiar sounds). But in the same way that other people have commented, the ajá is a higher pitch and the um-um is waaay lower.
Hold something in your mouth, or with your mouth closed, and say “yes sir” and “no sir”. The origins are in slavery and subjugation, and then mockery of that sound, and eventual acceptance as a response with genuine utility with a forgotten origin. It basically originated as [affirmative noise] sir and [negative noise] sir.
Korean has 음, which is hard to accurately romanize for pronunciation but is something like “ih uhm”. It is used in the same way.
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