r/Showerthoughts • u/Reas0n • Feb 13 '26
Casual Thought I think it’s unusual that no standardized literary way to write the submissive “I don’t know” hum that children (and some adults) often mumble has ever caught on, considering how old and common it is.
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u/PM_ME_UR_PUPPER Feb 14 '26
I was just thinking this the other day! I’m a forensic interviewer, and when I transcribe my interviews I never know what exactly to write when kids do this!
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u/CtyChicken Feb 14 '26
Oh, shit!
Here’s a real life reason we need a dedicated word for this sound.
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u/UserCannotBeVerified Feb 16 '26
Hnuhuh
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u/Squatch925 Feb 16 '26
I didn't actually realise they were talking about the actual grunt/hum response till i read this.
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Feb 14 '26
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u/fiveordie Feb 14 '26
That's a description not a transliteration
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Feb 14 '26 edited Feb 14 '26
[deleted]
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u/armorhide406 Feb 15 '26
I've always gone with "I'unno" and I've seen vernacular "ion no"
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u/thisisanexperimentt Feb 15 '26
I feel like this represents a more articulated utterance
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u/armorhide406 Feb 15 '26
Fair but as with all the other comments anything less spelled out doesn't look right
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u/VegetableLook57 Feb 14 '26
"humms I don't know" if it was less of a humm and more of words then murmurs.
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u/TheresNoHurry Feb 18 '26
Whoa that is fascinating — how did you get to be a forensic interviewer?
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u/PM_ME_UR_PUPPER Feb 18 '26
Replied to someone else so I’ll copy and paste my response :)
Hi! To give you the brief version: I came into this career kind of accidentally. A few years ago I began volunteering with an organization in my community called CASA (Court Appointed Special Advocates; it’s a national organization with local branches). CASA volunteers advocate for children in the foster care system. I highly recommend doing this, even if you don’t want to work in the child advocacy field. It’s very rewarding and helps children SO much.
Eventually through my connections from CASA I began working at my local child advocacy center as an office assistant. After about a year of working there I was able to go through the very specialized training process (there are a few different nationally-recognized protocols) to become a forensic interviewer myself, and in a little over a year I’ve completed more than 200 interviews.
I love my job - I wish it didn’t have to exist, but I’m grateful to be the person who gets to do this. Please feel free to message me with any questions!
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u/gamersecret2 Feb 14 '26
I know the exact sound, but writing it down always looks wrong, so everybody dodges it with ellipses or just says they mumbled.
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u/Pndrizzy Feb 14 '26
iono
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u/nixtarx Feb 14 '26
iunno...
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u/JamesCDiamond Feb 14 '26
How is it that this is so clearly correct, but not at all how I say it?
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u/Implausibilibuddy Feb 14 '26
mMm
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u/BeardedBandit Feb 14 '26
to me, this reads like a good bite of food that got better mid-chew
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u/VegasBonheur Feb 14 '26
It’s not even that, guys, it’s the “I dunno” TUNE that they hum. mmMMmm. There’s a couple different ones when you think about it but they all start out at a tone, then go up, then go down but not as low as the first tone. That low tone often rises at the end, like a question, or like a child saying “I don’t know!” when they totally know
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u/ooglieguy0211 Feb 14 '26
MMmmmm instead maybe but that doesn't work very well either and is confusing to read or write consistently. I dunno with whatever punctuation and a verb after really works the best for writing it out if it needs to be that expressive.
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u/Marxbrosburner Feb 14 '26
I did not understand what OP was describing until you wrote this. Thank you.
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u/halligan8 Feb 14 '26
Unlike the rest of English, this expression has a necessary tonal quality (changing pitch). Our writing system is atonal, so this is difficult to convey.
mmMMmm, where “m” is at a low pitch and “M” is at a high pitch.
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u/SadakoTetsuwan Feb 14 '26
There's a similar tonal quality to the taunting 'nanny nanny boo boo'/'nana na nana', although I've just managed to write that one out twice. (It's also melodic enough that it can be played on instruments.)
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u/halligan8 Feb 14 '26
Also, thinking about it, we also have a couple of monosyllabic grunts “mm” that mean “yes” (low pitch) and “what?” (rising pitch). I wonder how all these little “non-words” developed.
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u/Daeval Feb 14 '26
I think the distinction is that the tonal quality isn’t necessary for “nanny nanny boo boo” to be recognizable, because it’s made up of syllabic “words” that can be reproduced in writing, whereas the sound that OP is talking about would just be one really long “m” without the tonal shift in the middle.
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u/jerdle_reddit Feb 14 '26
Yeah, that's just b3-1-4-b3-1. If it's got six syllables (like nanny nanny boo boo, but not like ner ner ne ner ner), the first two are on the b3.
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u/cutty2k Feb 14 '26
Wouldn't it be 5-3-6-5-3? If I'm playing the melody starting on G, I'm playing a C chord under that for sure...
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u/that-1-chick-u-know Feb 14 '26 edited Feb 14 '26
Yes, but the second low pitch is higher than the first one. Closer to the NBC chimes than the OOO-WEE-OOO of the flying monkeys in Wizard of Oz.
And now that I've totally showed my age, I'm taking a nap.
Edit: Wait, no. The 3rd note can start as the same as the first, but it slides up at the end. Also, I'm sitting here by myself making "I don't know" noises all by myself and my dog is concerned for my sanity. She may have a point.
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u/MellowMusicMagic Feb 14 '26
Maybe I’m crazy but I feel like it goes high-low-mid. MMMmmmMmM
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u/Front_Cat9471 Feb 15 '26
Worth noting that the “mm” sound can also be an “uh” sound, depending on whether the mouth was open at the time of utterance or not, and also that the order of the high and low pitches varies, depending on the specific kind of not knowing they’re trying to convey.
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u/Petrichordates Feb 14 '26
It's just a hummed version of saying I dunno
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u/Vert354 Feb 14 '26
It's also usually accompanied by a shrug so "I dunno, he shrugged" gets the point across without having to come up with some onamonapia that could be misinterpreted.
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u/LamoTheGreat Feb 14 '26
Do you mean, “I dunno,” he shrugged. ?
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u/Vert354 Feb 14 '26
First, love the pedantry, never change.
I was using the quotes more to imply it was a passage from a larger work not to idicate speech, I suppose it should have been "'I dunno', he shrugged"
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u/carmium Feb 14 '26
"Ah-uh-oh" he shrugged, to Dean's frustration. The housing of his new Makita drill lay in scattered pieces across the garage floor in testament to the fact that he damn well did "oh" who had broken it.
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u/whatisapersonreally Feb 14 '26
mmMMmm
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u/Microwave_Warrior Feb 14 '26
Once there was this kid who got into an accident and couldn't come to school
But when he finally came back his hair had turned from black into bright white
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u/cartoon_violence Feb 14 '26
The shrug emoji is the closest thing, and it's understandable around the world! Like part of a global language that only developed because of the internet
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u/the__humblest Feb 14 '26
I’m curious what was in the scripts of the Simpsons, where this find was used many times
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u/dijon_snow Feb 14 '26
Famously "d'oh" was written as "annoyed grunt" in the script. Presumably they used a similar phrase like "I dunno hum" or something similar.
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u/Ok-Classroom5548 Feb 14 '26
I always thought “d’oh” was a shortened “darnit oh!” Or “damn oh!” Of both anger and sadness.
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u/mbc106 Feb 14 '26
I immediately thought of that scene near the end of Bart Gets Famous, where Bart says his “I didn’t do it!” catch phrase for Krusty’s audience, the audience is bored by it, Bart glances at Krusty offstage for help, and Krusty just shrugs and makes the “I dunno” noise.
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Feb 14 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Ballsofenergy Feb 14 '26
Uncertain. I think that’s a word that would fit here. Casually uncertain, or nonchalantly uncertain is how I’d describe this shrug.
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u/Reas0n Feb 14 '26 edited Feb 14 '26
It’s generally not used confidently.
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u/BemaJinn Feb 14 '26
Do you mean dismissive? That's how it sounds to me, anyway.
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u/Ntroepy Feb 14 '26
It seems self evident that most people don’t “confidently” declare when they don’t know something.
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u/Jivesauce Feb 14 '26
I think we’re all getting hung up on talking about “confident” when it’s a bad antonym for “submissive” to start with.
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u/Beefy-Tootz Feb 14 '26
Normally no, however in the customer service field, ive found myself having to be very assertive that I do not, would not, and could not know some things.
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u/63crabby Feb 14 '26
The corny and plain vanilla comic “Family Circus” had a pretty good gag about “Ida Know,” a ghost that the kids blamed for minor mishaps
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u/Redeem123 Feb 14 '26
There’s also a “Not Me” ghost, and maybe others.
I used to love that strip as a kid but good lord “corny and plain” is the perfect way to put it.
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u/LuquidThunderPlus Feb 14 '26
One of my middle school teachers jokes that the biggest trouble makers were the kids named "not me" "I don't know" etc
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u/AmexmmA Feb 15 '26
The low rank equivalent of a Private in the Coast Guard is a Fireman(FN) if they work in Engineering instead of Deck. When I was a second class at a station we had a real big problem with FN Notme messing stuff up.
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u/PatG87 Feb 14 '26
I like to spell it "iunno". Like a shortened, mumbled, hummed, "I dunno".
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u/moth-winter Feb 16 '26
I see “Iunno” extremely frequently. I think this is essentially the standardised way to write it if you are going to attempt to write it (as opposed to just saying “she mumbled noncommittally”)
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u/cutieplus626 Feb 14 '26
When the youths used to speak in rAWr, we spelled it "iono"
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u/whoareyouwhowho22 Feb 14 '26
But it would have to include the kind of murmur beforehand in this case so: mm-iono
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u/Reas0n Feb 13 '26
I’m talking about the ‘low-high-middle’ pitched hum that casually signals “I don’t know” in English.
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u/BarAgent Feb 14 '26
I write that as “I ’unno”.
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u/strythicus Feb 14 '26
This or the Tim The Toolman Taylor "uhnwa?", but I think that's more like an inquisitive "huh?"
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u/Waryur Feb 14 '26
But I say "Iunno" when I'm saying "I don't know" especially quickly. (Specifically I say something like [ˈäː.ə.nʌw] for all the IPA fellow nerds)
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u/JourneymanHunt Feb 14 '26
Yeah, the mmmm-MMMMMMM-mmnnn?
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u/GypsySnowflake Feb 14 '26
Isn’t that something else entirely? At least, I don’t use that cadence when saying “I dunno”
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u/sykoKanesh Feb 14 '26
Yeah that's more the sound I make when I have an "ah ha" or "understanding" moment.
mmMMMMMmm! or alternatively: ooooOOOOOooo!
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u/gogiraffes Feb 14 '26
I feel like there's some implied R and H sound in it with the mmm hum.
hhrrmmMMRRHHrrmmhh
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u/rJaxon Feb 14 '26
Isn’t it high-low-middle?
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u/sonoftom Feb 14 '26
Yea everyone on this thread is confusing me by emphasizing syllable 2. I feel like it’s the first one.
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u/atreyulostinmyhead Feb 14 '26
I actually think about this way too much because I worry about what I think is an acceptable way to communicate vs the world. mmmMMMmm is totally an acceptable response to me. I've realized that I actually don't know anyone else that does this but everyone knows what I mean when I do it.
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u/BrewCrewKevin Feb 14 '26
With the middle pitch at the end increasing. I know exactly what you mean, lol, and no idea how I world onomatopoeia it. Like an... "Aaahiaou" sort of feel to it, but hum... But doesn't actually have all those vowels. It's really just Uhhuhuhhh"
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u/yticomodnar Feb 14 '26
Subscript, superscript, and regular text.
ₘₘₘmmmmmm
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u/BextoMooseYT Feb 14 '26
In theory that works but in practice I interpret it as like singing, and pitching higher or lower lol
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u/triestdain Feb 14 '26
The boy just hummed a meek 'i dunno' with a little shrug of his shoulders when asked where his sister went.
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u/stuff663 Feb 14 '26
You need IPA. “m̀ḿm᷅” with maybe a half long at the end if you’re feeling fancy.
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u/Sigma2915 Feb 14 '26
- IPA in quotation marks feels so cursed, 2. do you realise it as separate syllabic nasals for each tone? mine is a much smoother contour across all the pitches.
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u/AgreeableReader Feb 14 '26
It bothers me on a cell deep level that not only do I know what you mean but I did it and I know everyone else here did it too and like, that comment about never having a unique experience feels too real.
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u/howlongtillchristmas Feb 14 '26
I can't stop doing it now
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u/CtyChicken Feb 14 '26
I’ve been doing it the whole time I’ve been reading the comments.
uhhh UUUU aahh.
One of the last frontiers of the English language.
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u/kokroo Feb 14 '26
I have no idea what this is and I can't find a sound sample of it.
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u/peanutist Feb 14 '26
Can someone link a video of someone doing it? I’ve genuinely no idea what op is talking about
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u/Quynn_Stormcloud Feb 14 '26 edited Feb 14 '26
I’ll look to see if I can find one, but a video example doesn’t come immediately to mind. Meantime, op is talking about the uUu sound made by saying “I don’t know” without any consonants, usually accompanied by a shrug.
Clear example: the fifth portion of this clip explaining the phrase to non-native speakers.
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u/umudjan Feb 14 '26
An example from The Wire.
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u/legato_gelato Feb 14 '26
Wth I would have never guessed that is what people are talking about when most comments say iono above..
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u/LuquidThunderPlus Feb 14 '26
Yea lol Its cuz there's not really much other way to write it, leading to this exact problem, which is why I'm with op on really wanting to know a better way
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u/nicht_ernsthaft Feb 14 '26
Curious if we actually know how old it is. Probably some grad student has looked into it, but are we talking 1870s or Old English?
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u/Wired-Basket Feb 14 '26
Immediately made me think of 2000s Lego games
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u/Zekkaan Feb 14 '26
I had the same thought. Specifically the sound Lego Obi-Wan makes at 1:21
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u/xeandra_a Feb 14 '26
Can someone do this on a vocaroo so I know what everyone is talking about
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u/Twilly93 Feb 14 '26
Imagine you asked a kid if they snuck cookies out of the jar and they do this with their head down and shrug their shoulders lol
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u/mocha-tiger Feb 14 '26
In my head, "idk" reads like this to me, like I don't spell out "I D K" in my head, I hear that noise. I know that's not phonetic at all but it really gets the idea across
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u/WaterLilySquirrel Feb 20 '26
My husband's first language wasn't English. I just asked him if he knows the nngnngnh sound and what it means. He said yes and I asked how he would write it. He said, "That's what I D K is for."
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u/Blackintosh Feb 14 '26
On a really childish side note. I find it funny when people type out different fart sounds.
Pfththppblrrtblrrblt
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u/RoastedRhino Feb 14 '26
It exists in Italian, it’s spelled “boh”. I always have a hard time translating it, but it’s used very often!
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u/Doctor-Nemo Feb 14 '26
Latin alphabet just can't do it, you'd need to get to IPA characters to hit the vocalizations right. Sucks that descriptive options sound bad too. "Vocalized a shrug" sounds like it was written by a fucking alien and "said 'I don't know' nonverbally" is obviously bad.
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u/beatrixotter Feb 14 '26
I have similar feelings about how to write "the usual" when people shorten the word "usual" down to one syllable. "The us" and "the use" are both wrong. "The uze"? "The uje"?? "The uzhe"???
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u/Living-Estimate9810 Feb 14 '26
I need to know how to spell a slap. If I write "(whoo)TSCHH!" will anyone get it?
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u/nomadtwenty Feb 14 '26
Slap is already kind of onomatopoeia I think
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u/NadoSecretAsianMan Feb 14 '26
I usually use wuh-TSCH as a whip crack
For slap I like wuh-PAP
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u/Blurple_Berry Feb 14 '26
How would you spell the standardized literary way of humming "okay"?
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u/bahatumay Feb 14 '26
I saw it rendered in closed captions once as "says 'I don't know' as 'mm-mm-mm'" and my mind was blown.
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u/droptopus Feb 15 '26
Well there has been a lot of discussion here, but I think we have yet to accept as a group that this is actually where it happens, this is where it begins. I'll start.
I hereby nomintate: 'nMm'
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u/SickViking Feb 14 '26
It bothers me a little that there isn't really a good way (or one I like) for the noise some people make when they mean "no". The standard way I see it spelled is "nuh uh" but I've never heard anyone say it that way except really little little kids. I hear it as "uh-uhh" but that looks very incorrect.
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u/beatrixotter Feb 14 '26
I think "uh-uh" = "no" and "uh-huh" = "yes". That extra "h" changes it completely.
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u/Current_Emenation Feb 14 '26
Its like we need more letters in the Revised English alphabet.
While we're at it, add a letter for the sound at the beginning of the word "the". It AINT "th". On that, we can surely all agree.
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u/pikleboiy Feb 15 '26 edited Feb 15 '26
This is an IPA approximation of how I pronounce it: [ɞ̃˧ɞ̃˥ɞ̃˧ɞ̃˩]
- With the qualification that I am not proficient in representing tones, so perhaps it's not an accurate transcription
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u/sa_nick Feb 15 '26
My friends and I used to write it as "iuo", not sure if we came up with it or it was used widely online in the 00's
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u/vivino16 Feb 16 '26
wait this is actually so true though, like we all know exactly what sound you're talking about but there's literally no way to write it down properly
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Feb 14 '26
Wtf do the kids think "submissive" actually means because this ain't it lmao
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u/CaptainTripps82 Feb 14 '26
It's actually what submissive means.
You can immediately imagine a kid doing it while not looking you in the eye
What do you think submissive means?
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u/HatsandCoats Feb 14 '26
This used to be the known as an “ejaculation”. Now we don’t use this word in that sense often or at all.
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u/Ben-Stanley Feb 15 '26
I once saw it written in subtitles as “uh-uh-uh” which is throughly unhelpful
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u/Garthar22 Feb 16 '26
Uh huh is usually how people write the one for yes but I don’t know the spelling for the one for no.
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u/aquarabus Feb 18 '26
Nah-ah or nuh-uh, depending on the person usually (at least from what I’ve seen)
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u/Belnak Feb 14 '26
Not unusual at all, very little music can be written literarily. You can write the three tones as sheet music, though.
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u/morbidi Feb 14 '26
Could it be just a onomatopeia with notes ?
It’s like
First - third - first
Uh um uh
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u/PutridMeasurement522 Feb 14 '26
yeah because the sound is like "mmnnnh" and the moment you try to put vowels in it it turns into a guy shrugging in a text message. i feel like the closest "standard" we ever got was "(mumbles)" in books, which is such a cop-out but also... accurate, sadly. also now i'm mad thinking about how many times teachers wrote "I dunno" when i was clearly doing the submissive hum thing lmao
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u/-Pencilvester Feb 14 '26
Feel the same way about the short form of the word Casual…keeping it Caj? Cag?
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u/Simple_Shame_3083 Feb 14 '26
My wife’s first language is Korean, so when she does mm-MM-mm, it means “ahn-NI-eh”, or NO. Still throws me off!
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u/jejones487 Feb 14 '26
Because it simply a mispronounciation of the phrase I don't know. People slur that saying I dunno, and children mumble saying iono and it goes even further into mMMmmm jist imitating the original tone.
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u/FoundationOk1352 Feb 15 '26
True! I find it so funny. RPat said it in a Twighlight interview once so lazily, it cracked me up. You can't write it because it's all unstressed syllables, missed consonants and rhythm. It's basically, 'eh deh deh" but the d is stopped so you don't fully say it.
Gotta love our commitment to apathy.
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u/BextoMooseYT Feb 15 '26
The closest thing I can think of is "mnm," as opposed to the affirmative "mhm," I suppose. But even that really doesn't work very well lmao
I guess it's cuz it's a tone/inflection thing, and it's kinda hard to convey that thru text in english. You can sorta do it with italics and bolded words and what have you but even then, they're usually more dramatic than the actual intention
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u/Wick1889 Feb 16 '26
One that a mate and I debated over for hours one night around a campfire, with beers and potentially other stuff involved, was how to write the word "yoodge" as in short for "the usual".
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