An Intake of Breath

I’ve referred to the Tigrinya language and its strangulated, choking sounds before – essentially a lot of it comes about by closing the airways (including making those harsh pharyngeal stops) in different ways to those used in European languages. There are also the non-word sounds, which are also quite different, to consider.

When we lived in Japan it wasn’t just the language that we got used to hearing but also the other noises that people make. For example, “ee-ee-ee-eh?” - starting high and rising, usually uttered by women - is an expression of surprise, the more barked “arey?” being the male equivalent. Mm-mm-mm-mm-mm accompanying what the speaker is saying is agreement and an indication that the listener is in fact listening.

Here, we have Wa! (can almost sound like Mwa! or Bwa!) for surprise or for when something is going badly wrong. A click made with the tongue against the roof of the mouth (which certain volunteers, who shall remain nameless, developed to an over-use extreme) is agreement, sort of like “yes you’re right”. But the most subtle one is the Habesha-intake-of-breath which is a kind of agreement as well, but on the lines of “I understand”.

This last one takes a bit of getting used to – you start by asking yourself “well what have I just said that this person should be so shocked, I was only explaining a mundane point about MS Excel why is he / she so surprised?” but then you realise it’s just an occasional interjection to show understanding and the paying of attention.

Language evolves, of course, and things move on and perhaps the need to have an actual person to listen to is disappearing as demonstrated by one of Caroline’s colleagues who has been known to use the intake-of-breath to himself while sitting at his computer, probably in response to a point he’s just made in a document.