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Huh?

Posted: Tue Feb 25, 2014 5:31 pm
by William Hupy
Read the March 2014 issue of Smithsonian, page 11. Therein appears an article about 'huh?" and how all of the languages studied by a team of researchers from the Max Planck Institute found a form of the word "huh" in each and in each it was used to seek a quick clarification.

Re: Huh?

Posted: Wed Feb 26, 2014 12:48 am
by Philip Hudson
My grandpa, disapproved of lazy speech. He definitely disapproved of "Huh?" He had a little maxim he would repeat whenever one of us little ones said, "Huh?" - "Pig says, 'Huh?' Hog knows better."

As a result of his and other of my elders examples, I never say "Huh?" "Errr," "Unh," etc.

Re: Huh?

Posted: Sun Mar 02, 2014 7:31 pm
by Slava
Did your Grandpa know what makes a pig a hog, or was it just a saying?

I do know, but only because I've read Bernice Randall's "When Is a Pig a Hog?"

A nice book of explanations of how related words differ. Not synonyms, but words that are often confusing and confused. Probably pretty good for students.

Re: Huh?

Posted: Sun Mar 02, 2014 8:34 pm
by Philip Hudson
It was necessary that my grandpa and I both knew the difference between a pig and a hog, else the maxim would have no meaning. I think they mean the same in England so the maxim wouldn’t work there. In our neck of the woods, we have names for the different stages of sus domesticus. When born they are piglets or shoats. Pig is used for a not yet mature hog of any sex. Young female pigs are gilts. A full-grown animal is a hog. If the hog is a male he is a boar and if it is a female she is a sow. A barrow is the analog to a bovine steer. The only name I had to “look up” was sus domesticus. I had forgotten that one.

The difference between hog (there called swine) and pork is explained in Walter Scott’s, “Ivanhoe” in the famous conversation between Gurth and Wamba, the two swine herders who were meditating on the linguistic changes taking place after the Norman Conquest. Every Agoran should be able to quote that dialog.

Nowadays swine are coarse rude people. They say, “Huh?” throughout life. J

Finally, the point of the maxim is that a small child might say, "Huh!" but she/he ought learn the polite, “Pardon me. What did you say?” We might be rednecks but we do have some suave.

Re: Huh?

Posted: Mon Mar 03, 2014 9:26 pm
by Perry Lassiter
At my son's ranch about 50 miles northeast of Philip, he has an infestation of wild hogs. These things are sweeping the country and causing problems wherever they go. He must've killed nearly 200 of them in the last five years or so, but it doesn't seem to make a dent.

Re: Huh?

Posted: Tue Mar 04, 2014 4:00 am
by Philip Hudson
The javelina or peccary is the only native hog in Texas. it is a small and usually harmless animal. Perry is describing feral European hogs. Texas is rife with these hogs. There are about three million of them. They are the descendants of domestic hogs gone wild. They get enormous and are dangerous. "The Houston Chronicle" says we are losing the war against them. As with many exotics in the wild, they have no natural enemies and their growth goes unchecked.

Re: Huh?

Posted: Wed Mar 19, 2014 2:57 pm
by eberntson
During WWII the Nazi took away all the french farmers rifles. However, this put a stop to the hunts to control the boar population. Funny thing about boar, they really don't stop growing, I mean they get HUGE & are a mean charging territorial beast at heart. GI were often invite on Boar Hunts with their weapons to help eliminate this scourge. There are a few books and stories I heard growing up about these hunts. If memory servers, the US troops were not above using machine guns to do this hunting.

Huh? What does this have to do with "huh" as a word, nada!

Re: Huh?

Posted: Wed Mar 19, 2014 3:39 pm
by Slava
Well, it does fit in with the other posts, and they came out of a saying involving "Huh."

By the by, a pig is a hog at 120 pounds.

Re: Huh?

Posted: Thu Mar 20, 2014 11:17 am
by William Hupy
My father talked about hunting boar with the burgomeister of a small village in occupied Germany after WWII. I regret not paying more scrupulous attention, especially because he did not talk much about his experiences during that phase of his life, but you people have managed to digress way beyond the initial topic, which is the wonder of identifying a word, or grunt or expression that transcends most languages. Huh? How rare is that? By the way, never eat rare pig or hog or boar.

Re: Huh?

Posted: Thu Mar 20, 2014 4:01 pm
by Perry Lassiter
Huh?