In northern Sweden, the word yes is widely communicated by a sound that’s reminiscent of someone sucking through a straw. It’s called the pulmonic ingressive. Linguist Robert Eklund calls this a neglected universal, meaning that it’s only recently been recognized as a sound that’s part of many languages around the world, even though it’s been around for a while. In one study, Swedes talking on the phone used ingressive speech when they thought they were speaking with a human, but not when they thought they were conveying the same information to a computer. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Swedish Pulmonic Ingressives”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hi there, Grant.
Hi, who is this?
This is Paula Raymond calling from Austin, Texas.
Hi, Paula. Welcome to the show.
Yeah, thanks for having me.
Hello, Paula. What can we help you with?
I wanted to talk with y’all about a video I recently watched about this large town in northern Sweden called Umeå.
Mm—
And there, instead of saying the word yes or ja, they just make a very unusual sound.
Mm—
And it sounds as if you’re taking a quick sip through a straw or saying the word shoop, like S-H-O-O-P, but inwards.
It’s kind of like a…
And I thought it was a really strange sound to use instead of saying just the word yes.
So it means yes. It has semantic content.
It does, yes. All the locals said that that’s exactly what they say rather than using the actual word yes or ya.
And why were you watching the video?
It popped up on a feed I was looking at, and it just said one of the most unusual sounds that they use in Sweden.
So I was curious as to what they were talking about.
Yeah, that’s called the pulmonic ingressive.
Yeah, you hear it in Sweden, and you hear it in a lot of other places.
Actually, throughout the world, actually.
It appears in languages on all the continents where people have presences.
Yeah.
Okay.
So is it just unique to, like, English speakers’ ears because we’re not used to that type of sound, maybe?
Actually, you hear something similar in Maine.
I have a friend who says that in parts of Maine people will answer a question with, yeah, yeah, like that.
Oh, interesting.
I haven’t heard of that.
Yeah.
So it has meaning, that kind of rapid intake of air, but it messes people up when they hear it for the first time, right?
Yes, definitely.
And I’ve shared it with coworkers and friends, and they all think it’s an extremely bizarre concept.
Yeah. And you know what’s really interesting is there was a study done once in, I think, 2003 of people in Sweden who were trying to make travel reservations on the phone.
And they would use it if they were dealing with a regular person, but they wouldn’t use it if they were dealing with an automated system.
And that tells us that it has some kind of human communication element there.
Right. It’s marked as informal.
And so you probably put on your best English for the machines, right?
So you’d be understood.
Yes, exactly.
So it’s not really that different from other languages.
Because I guess in English, we do that too, you were saying.
It’s less common, yeah.
And the Irish do it as well.
You’ll find it throughout Scandinavia, parts of Africa.
It just pops up here and there.
Argentina, even.
Argentina.
There’s a guy by the name of Robert Eklund, E-K-L-U-N-D, who’s done a lot of work on this.
And he proposes that it’s what he calls the neglected universal, meaning that here until recently, this has not been noticed as a common form of sound being produced by the human mouth and isn’t usually cataloged as one of the possible sounds to be included in the world’s languages.
And that’s kind of a mistake from his perspective.
Yeah, it should be.
So he’s got a really great website at ingressivespeech.info with tons of academic information about this.
Okay.
I’ll need to look at that.
Yeah.
So it’s Robert Eklund, E-K-L-U-N-D, and it’s ingressivespeech.info.
Okay.
Wonderful.
Thank you.
All right.
Well, thanks for calling.
Thank you so much.
That was really interesting.
Take care now.
Bye-bye.
All right.
Bye-bye.
Y’all as well.
Bye.
Bye-bye.
It is really interesting, right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
It’s interesting that sometimes it’s words themselves, like, yeah, yeah, yeah, or just the sound of the pulmonic, like pulmonary, like your lungs.
Yeah, we don’t quite have it in mainstream English, but we might do a sharp intake of breath to indicate a kind of a wincing emotion, like if somebody’s about to touch the hot stove or about to do something dangerous, you do a sharp intake of breath.
But that’s more of an interjection and just an emotional response than it has meaning at all.
It’s almost like tsk tsk, isn’t it?
There’s a few sounds that we have.
Where’s the dictionary of sounds?
We need a dictionary of sounds.
Where they have meaning on their own without being given.
All right.
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I learned Swedish in northern Sweden.
This pulmonic ingressive is more common and more pronounced the further north you go in Sweden, although you will hear it everywhere in the country.
What I thought was interesting is that foreigners who settle in Sweden (and who learn Swedish well) eventually begin using this sound in the same way (and for the same purposes) as Swedes. It is not ‘taught’ in Swedish classes, but it one of the things people begin using because everyone around them is using it.
I see a similar thing among foreigners who learn English in Texas— you know that their language learning is being reinforced and accelerated by good social integration with locals when they begin using “y’all” in the same way that locals do.
Swedes will sometimes do this even while speaking other languages; I think because it is such an automatic and involuntary action, sort of like body language like gesturing or nodding your head while conversing.
There are several variations. Usually it is used as either an affirmative answer to a yes/no question (such as “Did you finish your homework?”) or back-channeling (to convey the feeling that the listener is following another person’s story, instructions, etc.), somewhat like Americans might add “okay…”, “uh-huh…”, “right..”, etc.
It is also used as a negative, both as a negative answer to a yes/no question, as well to affirm a negative when listening (back-chaneling), for example to express agreement with a negative statement such as “Naturally, you don’t want to run out of vodka on Valborg evening.” Then it sounds like “nay.”
The Swedish pulmonic ingressives are mostly unvoiced (meaning that you hear only the air movement through the lips), but both the affirmative and negative versions are also commonly voiced (meaning that you also hear the vocal cords).
In the northern half of Sweden, you will hear women use a two-syllable version as an affirmative answer to a yes/no question, or to confirm the correctness of a statement such as, “So I have to take a number at the liquor store?” There is a glottal stop between the syllables (meaning your throat closes sharply), and it is most commonly voiced. It sounds like “yah-ah” and sounds like a voiced hiccup.