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It pains me to agree with Grant. It's usually much more amusing to take the contrary position. So I appreciate your efforts, cd.
The original post's comment has neither “dog biscuit†nor “dog cookie." Grant was simply pointing out that in the context of the dog treat “biscuit†didn't mark it as British because “dog biscuit†is a common generic term. It would shock me to see a pet product labelled simply as “cookies.†If anyone made that mistake there would probably be legal problems. I have never seen a product that is generically labelled as “dog cookies†but I trust Grant's frequency study. If I find 1000 brands, one would likely bear that phrase.
Savor this one, Grant. Next time it's you and me on the 2 / 3 gloves off, say, Fulton Street at high noon?
The “ingressive affirmative†(audible intake of air to indicate agreement or yes) is used by pretty much every Swedish person I know. Can function as back-channeling, but sometimes it is just "yes".
It has to clearly audible, because people even do it in telephone conversations.To make it adequately audible, you have to pucker or purse your lips somewhat (narrow the opening).
It is sometimes voiced with a “yah†sound, but more often it is unvoiced (you hear the air, but not the vocal chords).
Even non-Swedes learning Swedish in Sweden will eventually begin doing it unconsciously. I learned Swedish when I lived there in the 1990s. When I was speaking Swedish with my friends from Chile, Iraq, Kurdistan, etc., it just became part of our everyday vocabulary. No one learns it in a Swedish language class; it's just one of those things you can't help but pick up from everybody around you.
It's true that women do it somewhat more than men, but there is also individual variation; some men might do it more than some women.
In the part of Sweden where I learned the language (Västerbotten), there is a local variation, used almost exclusively by women, and usually heard when one was getting information (on the phone) from some kind of bureaucratic entity like a city or county office.
It is a two-syllable “yah-ah†with a distinct glottal stop between the two parts; almost sounds like a hiccup.
Example:
Q: “AlltsÃ¥, kontoret är stngt pÃ¥ lördag, eller?â€
A: “Ja-ahâ€
They also do a "negative ingressive" to mean "no", but this is almost always for back-channeling, as in expressing agreement with a negative statement. For this, the tongue makes a distinct N initial consonant, and it can be a voiced "nej" or an unvoiced whisper sound.
Example:
A: "Parents really shouldn't allow their children to stay out so late at night!"
B: "Nej"
Martha Barnette
Grant Barrett
Grant Barrett
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