*quality

Boosting this quality contribution up in the Hot Listing - declared quality by eric3579.

We do this too, a bit differently: "hjuup", coming from "yup", "jup" or "jep" but often it's just the same sound as in this video.. I live in west coast of Finland, we have plenty swedish speaking natives here.

I don't think it's. northern thing. I lived in the middle of Sweden and people did this. My wife had family in the south and they all did it. I still do it 20 years later in the US.

Wait what? How did this get top sifted - where's the appeal for a non-Swede in all this? Is the Sift just a Swedish cabal?

Also, yeah, this is to some extent used throughout the country but it pretty much comes from Norrland (northern Sweden, as the name implies). A real Norrlänning should ideally be able to go >90 days without saying a single word to another human being, which is why this noise comes in handy.

weird!

I still don't know "why" though. They show a few examples, but never really get into the reason?

"I don't have to open my mouth..." isn't right either. You can clearly see her opening her mouth!

Maybe there were some infuential Swedish linguists who were also smokers? Or yoga practicioners?

What 'why'? The sounds for yes and no are among the most elided and simplified in any language - they're replaced by all kinds of noises ('mm', 'yup', 'uh-huh', 'uh', 'yeah,' etc - not to mention nods, headshakes, or shrugs) and they still make perfect sense. They're some of the most basic and common grunts we want to make daily, and when we're not being formal we shorten them as much as possible.

Yell yes

Interesting stuff is interesting. I've never heard of this before, it's an unusual noise to hear in speech. The question should be why would it not be interesting?