Re: Universality of Interjections?

phippsmartin@xxxxxxxxxxx kirjoitti:

Question 1: What percentage (roughly) of the world's population would
understand the following interjections?

It's difficult to know, because we should first give an estimate of the phonetic variation of each interjection in any *one* language. Furthermore, some of your (English) interjections are just conventional written representations for "grunts" that actually have very little to do with the letters they're written. For instance, isn't

Hmph! (As in "Hmph! That's no good!") 

....just a voiceless nasal?

--
..... Tommi Nieminen .... http://www.cc.jyu.fi/~toniemin/ ....
    Csak füvön élt a kis zebra,
    de most rákapott a zabra;
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    ott oktatják szebbre-jobbra.
       -Devecseri Gábor-
..... tommi dot nieminen at campus dot jyu dot fi ....
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