Pulmonic ingressive
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The first time I heard a person do this, I was startled and afraid for his health. It was my dissertation adviser, Patrick Hanan. Because he often made this sound when we were conversing, I soon got used to it (sort of), but somehow hearing him make that sound unnerved me.
Pat was from New Zealand, but I believe that he was of Irish descent, so, in his case, perhaps we could refer to this sound as "The Gaelic Gasp".
See "The Gaelic Gasp* and its North Atlantic Cousins: A study of Ingressive Pulmonic Speech in Scotland".
Pat's wife Anneliese, who was German, also had this sound, but maybe she picked it up from Pat. The first few times I heard Pat make this sound, I thought he was having some sort of seizure and was worried for him. After awhile, I started to do it myself once in a while, especially while I was in Sweden, though it always felt like a very unnatural phoneme, even when I was in the midst of attempting to pronounce it. As a matter of fact, I was afraid that I was endangering myself by doing so and might choke on my own breath stream.
This sound is called a "pulmonic ingressive", and the word it is used for is the "pulmonic ingressive affirmative".
According to Leopold Eisenlohr, a similar sound exists in the Northwestern speech of Ningxia. "I had no idea what to think when I first started hearing it, but then realized it was common. I looked into it a little after finding this out, but can't remember exactly – are there other Sinitic varieties that have the ingressive affirmative? It was actually more of a space filler, or a way of soliciting agreement or checking for understanding. Maybe even an ingressive version of 啊 a. I remember finding that certain types of Mongolian had it, and was wondering if it was historical influence."
Off and on, I've lived in Sweden for more than a year, and I know lots of Swedes, so I have personally witnessed this sound on many occasions.
“↓”
Selected reading
- "Apparently this is not an April Fool's joke" (4/4/15) — with many invaluable, informative comments
- "Ingressive Speech" (11/20/14)
- "No, no, no; yes, yes, yes" (2/2/25)
- "Yeah no" (4/3/08) — must read
- "Yep and nope" (11/11/10)
[Thanks to Gene Hill]
Phillip Helbig said,
February 28, 2025 @ 10:34 am
I know three people (all women) who have done this for at least as long as I’ve known them (forty years or so). They all live in northern Germany, though one was born in Sweden and came to Germany when she was 18 or so.
In essentially all Germanic languages, yes is ja, though there are some variants. In Swedish, however, there are several variants, one of which is the pulmonic ingressive affirmative.
That phrase, by the way, sounds like the title of a 70s concept album. Or the name of the band. Or both.
Victor Mair said,
February 28, 2025 @ 10:47 am
@Phillip Helbig
It does have a nice ring to it.
Victor Mair said,
February 28, 2025 @ 11:34 am
A few minutes after I made this post, I had an idea for a collective experiment. Namely, if you know of any speech communities that possess this highly distinctive morphophoneme, please tell me where it is located and its earliest attested date for that area.
It might be very interesting and valuable to track the spatiotemporal distribution / spread of this sound. Conceivably, this could have important implications for human migrations and the evolution of culture and language, not to mention historical developments.
If the spread of the pulmonary ingressive affirmative was indeed due to the movement of people, in this case it would appear to be largely a latitudinal phenomenon. In contrast, the palatalization of the velars (e.g., 雞 (["chicken"] MSM jī < Wu [Yangtze estuary] 1ci < Cant. gai1) during the last three hundred years or so) is a longitudinal (north to south phenomenon). William Labov and William S-Y. Wang were keenly aware of the movement of particular speech sounds (such as the one I just described) through time and space, as well as their implications for the history of languages and the people who speak them. In tracking the diffusion of the pulmonic ingressive affirmative, please report only speech communities that possess it, not individuals, who may move around (even across long distances) on their own.
Kate Bunting said,
February 28, 2025 @ 12:40 pm
I recognise the phenomenon of saying 'yeah' on an indrawn breath (like the Swedish lady demonstrates for 'ja'), but I don't recognise an inhalation replacing the word altogether.
David B Solnit said,
February 28, 2025 @ 1:58 pm
Finnish too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingressive_sound#Inhaled_affirmative_'yeah'
Oskar Sigvardsson said,
February 28, 2025 @ 4:50 pm
Should be noted this is a very regional thing in Sweden. Very characteristic of dialects in northern Sweden, much more unusual in the southern parts.
mwarhol said,
February 28, 2025 @ 5:14 pm
I encountered this in Sweden in 2000. The speaker was a man in his mid-30s, I think. We were conversing in English. I was slightly taken aback when I heard it; it sounded something like a hiccup. It didn't interrupt the flow of the conversation, so I didn't ask about it. I later guessed that it was a conversational prompt, like an English speaker saying "uh-huh" or "okay" to indicate that they understood or had no objection to what was said. No one I talked to about it (Americans) had heard of it, so I was never sure until now what the heck it was actually about. Thanks for enlightening me.
David P said,
March 1, 2025 @ 8:44 am
My memory from lving in southern Sweden (near Jönköping) as a child many years ago is that you'd hear this from some people. It was more like the Norwegian woman in the video, a 'ja' without the 'j', and inhaled. My vague memory is that it could also be said as an exhalation.
Sophie M said,
March 1, 2025 @ 11:44 pm
My French teacher in college did this. She was an American grad student. I’ve seen it referred to as “the aspirated oui.” Always startling! This was in the late 80s.
Bob Ladd said,
March 2, 2025 @ 6:52 am
The "aspirated oui" mentioned by Sophie is definitely pretty normal in French, I think especially when it's a back-channel signal rather than an actual "yes" answer to a question.
cyberiagirl said,
March 3, 2025 @ 6:07 am
I learned Khalkh Mongolian while living in UB, and was taught to suck air in while saying 'yes' (tii) (or to just suck in) while someone was speaking to show that I was listening. I had no idea it took place in an English too!
Kay Hiller said,
March 17, 2025 @ 12:43 pm
I heard people do an inhaled "oui" when I lived in France. Perhaps not coincidently, this was in Normandy, where the Vikings also settled.