The Local news service journeyed to Umeå, a city in northern Sweden. There, a correspondent learned how to say "yes" in the local dialect of Swedish: purse your lips and suck in air for a moment. One native described it as the sound of sucking hard on a mint in your mouth.
I love it! We should adopt this word into American English.
-via 22 Words
When I moved to Sweden, I was told this about the people up north. Then I noticed that even people in the south do it. I certainly enjoy using it, and it's intruded in my English. It's used in about the same way we say "uh-huh", that is, as "yes" in "Do you want the receipt? Uh-huh.", and as a signifier that someone is listening "I went to the beach yesterday." "Uh-huh".
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When i watched the video it made me think of saying 'sure' but inhaling as you say it. And 'sure' also sounds like how Andrew Dalke was describing his examples.
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Ok, so how do you spell it?
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This is kind of blowing my mind because I only knew one person who did this, back when I was a teenager, and she was from Sweden and I never knew quite what to make of it. I always thought it was some kind of idiosyncratic-- you know, I don't know what I thought it was, but she was cute and I had a huge crush on her so she could probably do whatever she wanted
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And they all speak really good English, too.
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