[Ads-l] Antedating of "uh-huh"

James A. Landau JJJRLandau at NETSCAPE.COM
Sun Nov 18 15:44:34 UTC 2018


On Fri, 16 Nov 2018 12:06:29 Zone-0500  Herb Stahlke <hfwstahlke at GMAIL.COM> wrote:

>In Nigeria in the Peace Corps in 1963 we had to learn that "eh heh" (low
>tone-high tone) meant "no" and " en" (low tone nasalized) meant "yes".

Was there a glottal stop between "eh" and "heh"?  I have been wondering if the two words
in English with a glottal stop ("uh-oh" and the negative "uh-uh") were brought to the US
by slaves from Africa (many of whom came from in or near Nigeria) and somehow made the 
transition to general usage.

- Jim Landau

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