If there's one thing you thought you knew about talking, it's that speech is produced by pushing air out of the lungs, not by breathing in. But is that always true? This video shows a particular sound that means "yes" in Swedish, and it's produced while inhaling. But it turns out that the Swedish inhaled "yes" sound is just the beginning—inhaled, or ingressive sounds exist in quite a lot of languages. And curiously, ingressives are especially often used for words meaning yes or yeah.
I wrote about ingressives for Dictionary.com. That Swedish video that was going around is just the beginning -- there are ingressives found in languages from every continent, plus many dialects of English. I’d especially recommend checking out the map and recordings on Robert Ecklund’s website.
A few examples from Eklund of languages with various forms of ingressives include Tohono O’odham, spoken in Arizona; the Spanish of Mexico, Colombia, Chile, and Argentina; Chichewa (in Malawi) and Afrikaans (South Africa); Kuot (Papua New Guinea), South Efate (Vanuatu), and Warlpiri, Youlŋu and Anangu (all Australia); and an ingressive “hiss” in Japanese. In a few of them, like Tohono O’odham and Argentine Spanish, speakers may even say entire phrases ingressively.
