Today, I ate at a restaurant for the first time since the virus halting efforts began. I sat at a table outdoors with three other friends. I never removed my mask. I ordered a glass of cabernet sauvignon and it was the first the waitress had ever served with a drinking straw. I am a pioneer!
I had planned to slip the straw beneath my mask, sip, talk and leave. But, the menu had so many attractive-sounding dishes on it I decided to order one. I had a dish of wild boar sausages, mashed potatoes and slaw.
We discussed the shenanigans in DC. We talked about the president's performance on the MoCA test and one man said that reporters should have looked at the harder questions on the test, not just the beginning ones. He used his voice tone to communicate that those later test items were far more challenging. His tone got my attention.
I have noticed how voices, body language, gestures as well as words are used communicate so much. In my family, people disagree with what is being said by the use of a sound that is often written "uh-uh". It is said like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNfmzuSUYOE The first "uh" is cut short, as in the video. I notice in some Friends episodes that disagreement is expressed by "nuh-uh", with the initial N emphasized.
This link goes to "Ross" of Friends using a Nuh-type sound to disagree and "Chandler" reasserting his idea with "Ya-huh"
https://www.soundboard.com/sb/sound/238297
It can be helpful when using these utterances if the appropriate head movements, facial expressions and level of determination are used at the same time. You may want to be careful and conservative with these expressions since repeated use, where I use a negative and you use a positive and we keep on - such exchanges may result in both of us being labeled as childish.
