Language is a funny thing. On the one hand, it unites us as humans, being the only animals with the ability to speak in such a complex way. On the other hand, people are very divided due to language, which makes it difficult for people from different places to speak to one another.

according to a study published in PLOS One, however, there may be at least one word that everyone can understand.

Huh?

Yup, that’s the word.

In the study, the linguists looked at the team across 31 different languages coming from all different root languages and surprisingly, they all had this word with the same meaning.

The team involved with the study explained:

“In all languages investigated, it is a monosyllable with at most a glottal onset consonant, an unrounded low front central vowel, and questioning intonation.”

The exact sound may vary a little bit, but it is close enough that people from almost anywhere in the world would understand the meaning.

This likely happened because while languages evolved differently in different places, there is always a need to be able to quickly express the fact that you don’t know what the speaker meant. This helps to keep a conversation from becoming derailed by misunderstandings.

The team said of this phenomenon:

“Given these pressures of turn-taking and formulation in conversation, a signal that indicates trouble should be minimal and easy to deploy. At the same time, given the communicative importance of indicating trouble (which if not solved might derail the conversation), such a signal should also clearly indicate a knowledge deficit and push for a response. These requirements are met rather precisely in the combination of minimal effort and questioning prosody that characterises the [repair] interjection across languages.”

This essential piece of language is not only critical for modern conversation but for conversation to evolve at all. Without it, developing languages would have had a much more difficult time. It is impossible to predict just how much of an influence this simple word may have had on our linguistic and overall development.

Huh, I wonder what other words are universal.

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