Ooh aaaaaah. In the Black Country of the West Midlands, not far away from where I live, this sound means something. It means "Yes I hear what you are saying. That's something which I hadn't thought of and I realise now that you are completely correct and I was wrong". I wonder whether this is a word, and so would need to be translated into other languages, or whether it is a sound that other peoples would understand without translation. The sound of the word, if you are not familiar with it, rises in pitch to the letter h, then falls in pitch on the aaaaaaah which is longer than the ooh. The ooh is about one second long and the aaaaaah is about two seconds long. At three second in length it is clearly something which is meant to have importance. (It is nothing like the Cornish yokel's ooharrrgh. (I don't know whether they actually say that or whether it's just a joke. Different Question, but answer it if you like.)

It's probably best classified as an interjection. You British have more complex ones than we do; you have things like "cor" while we limit ourselves mostly to pure vowels and semivowels like "wow." However, we both use profanity as interjections when we're really upset, as well as blasphemous religious terms. Sometimes all combined together into complicated polysyllabic constructions like g** d*** m***** f***ing s** of a b****, apparently one of the first phrases Americans learn as children.

Whether you call an interjection a "word" is a fine point and I don't know how the professionals rule on that. What matters in the context of translation is that interjections express feelings more than denotative meaning. Even the eight-word compound above means nothing except, "I'm feeling a lot of pain and/or anger."

The tell is that tone matters a lot with interjections. "Oh" can mean "now I understand," "I don't understand at all," "what a surprise," "I was expecting that," "I'd like to hear more about that," "I never want to hear about that again," and many other things, depending on the tone.

Your two-syllable interjection apparently has a specific meaning, but you make it clear that it has to bear a specific combination of tones in order to carry that meaning. Tone is not phonemic in English, so I'd be reluctant to classify it as a word.

As to whether it needs to be translated... hmm. With a rising tone on the short first syllable and falling tone on the longer second syllable, I feel like I would get the basic connotation of "now I understand," but the long "ah" with the falling tone does that all by itself. I would not pick up the subtleties you add.

So I don't think a speaker of another language would understand it fully. Still, I don't know how you would go about translating it. Every language community has different interjections.

Sitting here grunting to myself experimentally, providing my dogs with great entertainment, I think would probably express that sentiment using the same tones, but on a constant "oh," and about three times faster. And I would finish on a lower tone than I started. All right, let's take this to the piano. It's A, C, low E.

It's probably best classified as an interjection. You British have more complex ones than we do; you have things like "cor" while we limit ourselves mostly to pure vowels and semivowels like "wow." However, we both use profanity as interjections when we're really upset, as well as blasphemous religious terms. Sometimes all combined together into complicated polysyllabic constructions like g** d*** m***** f***ing s** of a b****, apparently one of the first phrases Americans learn as children.

Whether you call an interjection a "word" is a fine point and I don't know how the professionals rule on that. What matters in the context of translation is that interjections express feelings more than denotative meaning. Even the eight-word compound above means nothing except, "I'm feeling a lot of pain and/or anger."

The tell is that tone matters a lot with interjections. "Oh" can mean "now I understand," "I don't understand at all," "what a surprise," "I was expecting that," "I'd like to hear more about that," "I never want to hear about that again," and many other things, depending on the tone.

Your two-syllable interjection apparently has a specific meaning, but you make it clear that it has to bear a specific combination of tones in order to carry that meaning. Tone is not phonemic in English, so I'd be reluctant to classify it as a word.

As to whether it needs to be translated... hmm. With a rising tone on the short first syllable and falling tone on the longer second syllable, I feel like I would get the basic connotation of "now I understand," but the long "ah" with the falling tone does that all by itself. I would not pick up the subtleties you add.

So I don't think a speaker of another language would understand it fully. Still, I don't know how you would go about translating it. Every language community has different interjections.

Sitting here grunting to myself experimentally, providing my dogs with great entertainment, I think would probably express that sentiment using the same tones, but on a constant "oh," and about three times faster. And I would finish on a lower tone than I started. All right, let's take this to the piano. It's A, C, low E.
Fraggle. The phrase is said with a nasal Birmingham accent (which doesn't help, if you are not familiar with it), and the aaaaaah goes up and down while falling. It is quite sing-songy.
The sound contains a status signal, and is a sound of conciliation which puts you socially beneath the other person at least for a short time. It is like the emoticon with the waving white flag, or a dog showing its belly. A very useful sound.

The phrase is said with a nasal Birmingham accent (which doesn't help, if you are not familiar with it)...No, like most Americans I recognize only Cockney, which is much more than just an accent, and Oxford, which some say is a deliberately crafted pronunciation. The Beatles, Monty Python, Wallace & Gromit, Robbie Williams and everyone else fall somewhere in between but we don't catch the subtleties.... and the aaaaaah goes up and down while falling. It is quite sing-songy. The sound contains a status signal, and is a sound of conciliation which puts you socially beneath the other person at least for a short time. It is like the emoticon with the waving white flag, or a dog showing its belly. A very useful sound.Aha, the essence of non-tonal languages. We use tone as a separate bandwidth for communicating non-verbal messages. The Chinese find this quite strange, since they grow up regarding tone as phonemic. They think of themselves as more articulate than us, because if they want someone to know how they feel, they have to be able to put it precisely in words instead of "growling and whining like drunken chimpanzees" as one friend put it. :)

Yes it's an amusing sounding and sociable word. If you are in the right place you will hear it in a friendly discussion quite often. In this country , we find the Birmingham accent amusing, so maybe this is a factor. You'll have to find yourself a brummy. They get about, so shouldn't be too hard. As regards this thread- Any Brummies out there! Speak up! "yowl be disgraced!"

The excruciating Brummie accent. Truly the worst accent ever conceived of:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RCdwdIMfr3I
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9DcP2UUHwRw

And they all live on Cup-a-Soups.

Ever been to Dudley? Thats the worst (or best?) example.

Doodloooii?

No, can't say I have.

Fraggle. The phrase is said with a nasal Birmingham accent (which doesn't help, if you are not familiar with it), and the aaaaaah goes up and down while falling. It is quite sing-songy.
The sound contains a status signal, and is a sound of conciliation which puts you socially beneath the other person at least for a short time. It is like the emoticon with the waving white flag, or a dog showing its belly. A very useful sound.

It's actually used throughout much of the U.S. as well. It's sort of a contraction of the two statements, "Oh, yes" and "Ahhh, yes!" being melded together. Every single individual I know (and that's hundreds) all recognize the meaning immediately. It's much like, "NOW I understand - and you're exactly right." :)

Well done Red army, Barrie from "aus wiedersehn" is a perfect example. There is definitely a prejudice against the Birmingham accent, and people think that Brummies are thick. If Steven Hawking had a Brummie voice generator, no-one would take him seriously.

And yes, Read only, it could just be "ah yes" in a black country accent. It can be said in much the same way. Aah Yeeeees!

Yer roight there mate, Oooh aaaaaaah!

Read only. You not only could be right, you are right. Thinking about it, the Brummie word aah means yes. so ooh aaaaaah is the equivallent of ooh yeeeeees, in which the final word goes up and down while falling.
What is the American equivalent of the Black Country, ie old heavy industry town, and do they have an accent that people find amusing.

Read only. You not only could be right, you are right. Thinking about it, the Brummie word aah means yes. so ooh aaaaaah is the equivallent of ooh yeeeeees, in which the final word goes up and down while falling.
What is the American equivalent of the Black Country, ie old heavy industry town, and do they have an accent that people find amusing.

We've got several pockets of local accents but perhaps the best example of what you're asking about would be the hill/mountain region of Appalachia. It contains some rather isolated sections and pretty much the only major industry is coal mining. There are families in that region that have been miners for generations.

While they can still be understood by most other Americans with little or no trouble, the accent is certainly not mainstream and they have some words and phrases that just aren't found anywhere else. The rest of the country tends to label them as "hillbillies", "mountain people", and "back-woodsy."

Our old heavy industry towns - like Pittsburgh, Birmingham Alabama, and all along the Eastern Seaboard (New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, etc.) are still very much mainstream as far as language goes.

Up in the extreme Northeast (Maine, etc.) you'll find another group that has retained many Scottish words and phrases - now they CAN be difficult to understand when listening to two or three of them having a conversation.

The excruciating Brummie accent. Truly the worst accent ever conceived of:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RCdwdIMfr3I
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9DcP2UUHwRw

And they all live on Cup-a-Soups.
I hope anyone reading this thread will have a look at these. They are really funny. For educational purposes I think Barry even says aah meaning yes at one point.

Well done Red army, Barrie from "aus wiedersehn" is a perfect example. There is definitely a prejudice against the Birmingham accent, and people think that Brummies are thick. If Steven Hawking had a Brummie voice generator, no-one would take him seriously.

And yes, Read only, it could just be "ah yes" in a black country accent. It can be said in much the same way. Aah Yeeeees!

Yer roight there mate, Oooh aaaaaaah!

lol. I don't think the accent is too bad. I can put up with it for about a day.

To be honest, I hate Londoners (those my age) the most. The way they speak, their slang, walk, dress etc. :mad:

The excruciating Brummie accent. Truly the worst accent ever conceived of.Having lived almost entirely in the West, I haven't run into enough British people to really sort out the various regional accents. I hear some telltales that distinguish it. Pronouncing "way" as "why," that sounds "Austrylian." And "doo-unt" for "don't," that's Jamaican.

åååh, aaah! Means the exact same thing in sweden.

Yes I hear what you are saying. That's something which I hadn't thought of and I realise now that you are completely correct and I was wrong.

Ah, oui oui. —Mais, bien sûr alors!

The excruciating Brummie accent. Truly the worst accent ever conceived of:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RCdwdIMfr3I
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9DcP2UUHwRw

And they all live on Cup-a-Soups.

....and Pot Noodles.
Hope the viewers of this thread have been doing their homework and watching the course material. I've found another clip, where Barry says a short version of ooh aaaaaah, almost at the end of the clip.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZcKUGGzqNeI

A song called "Ooh aah" by hip-hoppers the Grits contains this.


[Hook]
My life be like
Ooh Aah (yeah), Ooh Ooh
My life be like (yeah)
Ooh Aah, Ooh Aah (yeah), Ooh Ooh
Ooh Aah (yeah), Ooh Ooh
My life be like (yeah)
Ooh Aah, Ooh Aah (yeah), Ooh Ooh
My life be like (yeah)

åååh, aaah! Means the exact same thing in sweden.
And in Scotland, Och Aye, but there it means the opposite: " That's right, but you aren't telling me anything I didn't know already".

And in Scotland, Och Aye, but there it means the opposite...That KH sound in Scots dialect: is that a remnant of an earlier form of English when it sounded more like German, or is it something they brought over with them in the Gaelic language? Does Gaelic even have that phoneme? You never hear it in Irish words.

We joke about Scots saying, "The moonlikht is brikht tonikht." Do the people in the back country talk that way?

And in Scotland, Och Aye, but there it means the opposite: " That's right, but you aren't telling me anything I didn't know already".

That's interesting, it can mean that here too. Actually i think it's quite common to express yourself in those terms at those occations.

Even if you are not sarcastic etc. Because it is so old.

Probably the vikings came with it, ey?
Or should we call them just pirates?

A song called "Ooh aah" by hip-hoppers the Grits contains this.


[Hook]
My life be like
Ooh Aah (yeah), Ooh Ooh
My life be like (yeah)
Ooh Aah, Ooh Aah (yeah), Ooh Ooh
Ooh Aah (yeah), Ooh Ooh
My life be like (yeah)
Ooh Aah, Ooh Aah (yeah), Ooh Ooh
My life be like (yeah)


Just to make things perfectly clear

This is Barry from Auf Wiedersehen Pet
http://www.oniva.com/upload/2033/timothy_spall.jpg
"Ooh aaaaaah! I never thought of that."





And this is the Grits
http://www.oniva.com/upload/2033/grits.jpg
"Ooh Aah (Yeah)"

Fraggle.
Irish words tend to be softened rather than gutteral.
The old Irish alphabet had 27 letters, missing out qvwxyz and k, but adding nine softened sounds bh ch dh fh gh mh ph sh th, which each had their own letter. Their letter c sounds as a k. The nearest to kh is probably in the Irish word loch. In the west of Ireland, many people who speak Engish do so with older sounds, thus water is warther, and steam is shteam.

Irish words tend to be softened rather than gutteral. The old Irish alphabet had 27 letters, missing out qvwxyz and k, but adding nine softened sounds bh ch dh fh gh mh ph sh th, which each had their own letter. Their letter c sounds as a k.What are some of those "softened sounds"? I see the name "Siobhan" occasionally but I have no idea how it's pronounced. Since S seems to already carry the sound of our SH (Sinn Fein, Sinead O'Connor), how is Irish SH pronounced? I remember songs about Ireland and presumably from Irish immigrants, from when I was a kid, and they mention the shilelagh, a fighting stick. But they always pronounce it "shi-lay-lee" with the GH silent.The nearest to kh is probably in the Irish word loch.We always pronounce that with the German/Slavic CH.In the west of Ireland, many people who speak Engish do so with older sounds, thus water is warther, and steam is shteam.Those aren't the sounds of an older dialect of English. "Water" goes all the way back to the Old German of the Angles and Saxons when they still lived in Europe. There's never been an R or a TH in it. Likewise the S in "steam." The modern German pre-consonantal SH is a recent shift, probably the same vintage as Vernor's Law, which never made the trip to Britannia except with Yiddish-speaking comedians. At least that used to be a common Yiddish "shtick" in America when people still spoke Yiddish.

What are some of those "softened sounds"? I see the name "Siobhan" occasionally but I have no idea how it's pronounced. Since S seems to already carry the sound of our SH (Sinn Fein, Sinead O'Connor), how is Irish SH pronounced? I remember songs about Ireland and presumably from Irish immigrants, from when I was a kid, and they mention the shilelagh, a fighting stick. But they always pronounce it "shi-lay-lee" with the GH silent.We always pronounce that with the German/Slavic CH.Those aren't the sounds of an older dialect of English. "Water" goes all the way back to the Old German of the Angles and Saxons when they still lived in Europe. There's never been an R or a TH in it. Likewise the S in "steam." The modern German pre-consonantal SH is a recent shift, probably the same vintage as Vernor's Law, which never made the trip to Britannia except with Yiddish-speaking comedians. At least that used to be a common Yiddish "shtick" in America when people still spoke Yiddish.
They used to use an alphabet called the uncial, which was first used by monks writing manuscripts. Today it is mostly seen on products that are deliberately trying to look old-fashionedly irish. If you buy a shil-ay-lee, it might have the town name written on it using the old alphabet.
In the 50s they went over to a more standard, but less pretty roman alphabet.

You misunderstood me regarding the West of Ireland. Some of the people who lost their own language there then began to speak English as if it was Irish.

There are two German versions of ch. One is as in Ich, which is almost a K, and the other is like the ch in Bach, which is softer. The Ch in Loch is pronounced like that in Bach.

Siobhan is pronounced Shivawn. I don't know how the sh differs from the s. Perhaps someone who speaks the language could let us know.