Pulmonic ingressive

The first time I heard a person do this, I was startled and afraid for his health.  It was my dissertation adviser, Patrick Hanan.  Because he often made this sound when we were conversing, I soon got used to it (sort of), but somehow hearing him make that sound unnerved me.  

Pat was from New Zealand, but I believe that he was of Irish descent, so, in his case, perhaps we could refer to this sound as "The Gaelic Gasp".

See "The Gaelic Gasp* and its North Atlantic Cousins: A study of Ingressive Pulmonic Speech in Scotland".

Pat's wife Anneliese, who was German, also had this sound, but maybe she picked it up from Pat. The first few times I heard Pat make this sound, I thought he was having some sort of seizure and was worried for him. After awhile, I started to do it myself once in a while, especially while I was in Sweden, though it always felt like a very unnatural phoneme, even when I was in the midst of attempting to pronounce it.  As a matter of fact, I was afraid that I was endangering myself by doing so and might choke on my own breath stream.

This sound is called a "pulmonic ingressive", and the word it is used for is the "pulmonic ingressive affirmative".

According to Leopold Eisenlohr, a similar sound exists in the Northwestern speech of Ningxia. "I had no idea what to think when I first started hearing it, but then realized it was common. I looked into it a little after finding this out, but can't remember exactly – are there other Sinitic varieties that have the ingressive affirmative? It was actually more of a space filler, or a way of soliciting agreement or checking for understanding. Maybe even an ingressive version of 啊 a. I remember finding that certain types of Mongolian had it, and was wondering if it was historical influence."

Off and on, I've lived in Sweden for more than a year, and I know lots of Swedes, so I have personally witnessed this sound on many occasions.

“↓”

 

Selected reading

• "Apparently this is not an April Fool's joke" (4/4/15) — with many invaluable, informative comments
• "Ingressive Speech" (11/20/14)
• "No, no, no; yes, yes, yes" (2/2/25)
• "Yeah no" (4/3/08) — must read
• "Yep and nope" (11/11/10)

[Thanks to Gene Hill]