Re: Interjections

Hi!

"Mark J. Reed" <markjreed@...> writes:
>...
> > who else might have some interjections in their conlang.  I'm
> > wondering if different emotions call forth similar phonemes, e.g., is
> > pain always "ow"?
>
> By no means.  The Spanish and Italian for "ow" is [a'i], for instance.
And I think in Japanese it's 'ita'.  Or, if it really hurts,
'itatatatata'. :-)

In Icelandic, 'huh?' is /ha/ with falling tone, so maybe 'ha!' for
an English reader.

Or try calling a Swede in front of you on the street by 'hey!'.  He
will probably not turn around, because he thinks you're greeting some
random person on the street.  (This happened to me.)

On the phone with a Dutch who tells his phone-number for calling back,
a German will probably use 'hm.' as a affirmative sound.  Actually,
with a rising tone, so better 'hm?' for the English reader.  The Dutch
will probably reply by repeating the last few digits.  (This also
happened to me.)  Confusingly, 'hm?' is also 'hm?' in German, but with
a fast rising tone instead of a slow one as the affirmative sound.
(And my grandma uses /hm=?m=hm=/ for 'yes!' :-)))

And |ieh!| /i:/ and |bäh!| /bE/ or /bE:/ is German for 'yuck!'.

And so forth and so forth. :-)

**Henrik