Sunday, October 21, 2007

Uh-huh, Mm-hmm

A new and exciting question has recently been heavily debated inside my little company. The debate in question is regarding the use of "mm-hmm" and/or "uh-huh" as a replacement for "you're welcome" in response to a standard "thanks". Personally I'm strongly against it and find a number of better and less formal sustitutes that actually consists of a word, such as; "sure", "no problem", "anytime" or even "yeah". Anything but "mm-hmm" or "uh-huh".

Granted, there is also the issue here of the well being poisoned, with Mr. B (who by the way has become a man now...) often using the said sounds and also managing to sound very arrogant while he's at it, like he's doing you a big favor when you in reality just asked him because you couldn't be bothered to open that excel file he had been working on.

The debate rages on and there seem to be some concensus around the fact that "mm-hmm" and/or "uh-huh" sounds horrible coming out of Mr. B but the question whether it generally is acceptable or not is still under debate.
However, I would also like to state that I find "mm-hmm" and/or "uh-huh" to be perfectly acceptable as a substitute for a "yes"/"yeah" in a normal informal conversation.

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