“I’m sorry, could you repeat that?”

“What did you say?”

“Did I just hear what I think I heard?”

No matter where you are or what language you’re speaking – and especially if you’re someplace where you don’t speak the local language – you’ll no doubt find yourself using one of these phrases, or something like them. Or if you’re like people everywhere, you’ll just say one brief syllable …

Huh?

… and you’ll be understood. According to a new study done by researchers and linguists in The Netherlands the sound of the question word used to mean “please repeat what you have just said because I didn’t understand it” in many languages around the world is very similar. They’ve proposed that it’s a nearly global bit of language, and might actually be tied to the earliest form of language, one that humans all spoke in the days when spoken language was first beginning. While there are some differences to exactly how the “question sound” is expressed the one-syllable word has essentially the same pronunciation. In other words, although people in Iceland say “ha” with a downward-falling inflection, and people in Japan say “ei” with an upward inflection, all of the languages the researchers looked at had approximately the same syllable for this questioning sound: a vowel with or without the “h”-sound at the beginning, and without a closing consonant sound.

English has become a global standard for communication, but if you’re traveling you’ll still come across situations where you can’t understand other people, and they can’t understand you. It’s a good idea to improve your English to help you communicate around the world, and to learn another language like Spanish or Mandarin to better relate to people in other countries and improve your job prospects, but it’s nice to know that no matter where you go, there’s at least one word that everyone will understand.

You can read the full article on this study at the online journal PLOS ONE.