{"id":70308,"date":"2025-08-05T09:56:42","date_gmt":"2025-08-05T14:56:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/?p=70308"},"modified":"2025-08-05T09:56:42","modified_gmt":"2025-08-05T14:56:42","slug":"doh","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/?p=70308","title":{"rendered":"D'oh"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Beginning in 2006, \"meh\" studies were a staple of Intellectual inquiry at Language Log.\u00a0 For a virtuoso variorum, see Ben Zimmer's \"<a title=\"Permanent link to Three scenes in the life of \" href=\"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/?p=3806\" rel=\"bookmark\">Three scenes in the life of 'meh'<\/a>\" (2\/26\/12).\u00a0 Herewith, relying on \"d'oh\", another (in)famous Simpsonsism, I will partially resurrect meh studies.<\/p>\r\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Frases Famosas de Los Simpson en Diferentes Doblajes\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/b-IX_Ads7OI?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\r\n<p>Frases Famosas de Los Simpson en Diferentes Doblajes<\/p>\r\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\r\n<p>David Crotty, in \"<a href=\"https:\/\/scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org\/2025\/08\/01\/translating-doh\/\">Translating D'oh!<\/a>\", <i>The Scholarly Kitchen<\/i> (8\/1\/25), observes:<\/p>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\">Some things are universal. Or so you might think, but it turns out that Homer Simpson\u2019s catchphrase of regret, \u201cD\u2019oh!\u201d (which has <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/D%27oh!\">its own Wikipedia page, by the way<\/a>) is expressed differently in the Simpsons broadcasts in different countries. While one would think that Bart\u2019s \u201cAy caramba!\u201d would shift depending on where the broadcast was taking place (apparently it remains unaltered in Mexico, but not in Spain), D\u2019oh! seems like it would translate fairly well. Apparently not, and this falls into the same category we learned about back in 2019 when looking at <a href=\"https:\/\/scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org\/2019\/07\/26\/animal-sounds-around-the-world\/\">the remarkable variation in the words for animal sounds around the globe<\/a>.<\/p>\r\n<p>Not to be confused with \"duh\".<\/p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\r\n<p><b>Selected readings<br \/><\/b><\/p>\r\n<ul>\r\n<li>\"<a title=\"Permanent link to Three scenes in the life of \" href=\"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/?p=3806\" rel=\"bookmark\">Three scenes in the life of 'meh'<\/a>\" (2\/26\/12)<\/li>\r\n<li>\"<a title=\"Permanent link to The \" href=\"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/?p=855\" rel=\"bookmark\">The 'meh' wars<\/a>\" (11\/21\/08) &#8212; includes an energetic discussion about the possible Singlish creole origin of this interjection of indifference precipitated by john riemann soong's first comment in the thread<\/li>\r\n<li>\"<a title=\"Permanent link to Words for 'meh'\" href=\"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/?p=3653\" rel=\"bookmark\">Words for 'meh'<\/a>\" (12\/22\/11) &#8212; with reference to Geoff Pullum's \"<a href=\"http:\/\/itre.cis.upenn.edu\/~myl\/languagelog\/archives\/000350.html\">Snowclones: lexicographical dating to the second<\/a>\" (1\/16\/04), which includes an extraordinarily long list of Language Log posts on Snowclones made between 10\/21\/03 and 7\/28\/06, as updated by Mark Liberman<\/li>\r\n<li>\"<a title=\"Permanent link to Simpsons\" href=\"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/?p=4248\" rel=\"bookmark\">Simpsons<\/a>\" (10\/11\/12)<\/li>\r\n<li>\"<a title=\"Permanent link to Nonnegation\" href=\"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/?p=53678\" rel=\"bookmark\">Nonnegation<\/a>\" (2\/19\/22)<\/li>\r\n<li>\"<a title=\"Permanent link to The multivalence of interjections\" href=\"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/?p=68886\" rel=\"bookmark\">The multivalence of interjections<\/a>\" (4\/19\/25)<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\n<p>[h.t. Ted McClure]<\/p>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Beginning in 2006, \"meh\" studies were a staple of Intellectual inquiry at Language Log.\u00a0 For a virtuoso variorum, see Ben Zimmer's \"Three scenes in the life of 'meh'\" (2\/26\/12).\u00a0 Herewith, relying on \"d'oh\", another (in)famous Simpsonsism, I will partially resurrect meh studies. Frases Famosas de Los Simpson en Diferentes Doblajes<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[373,334,26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-70308","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-interjections-and-exclamations","category-language-and-entertainment","category-language-and-the-media"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70308","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=70308"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70308\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":70326,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70308\/revisions\/70326"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=70308"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=70308"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=70308"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}