That's very interesting - the Chinese "oi" has pretty much exactly the same usages, down to the little details! (I'm most familiar with the Cantonese 喂 wai2, th

That's very interesting - the Chinese "oi" has pretty much exactly the same usages, down to the little details! (I'm most familiar with the Cantonese 喂 wai2, though it's not my first language) I wonder if that suggests this is one of those universal pre-linguistic words, like "huh" [1]. That feels especially believable given the utter simplicity of the mouth sound. It's almost just a yell, in the same way that "huh" is almost just an outbreath. [1] https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/everybody-almost-every-language-says-huh-huh-180949822/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/everybody-almo...