By: Aditya Shukla, Cognition Today
Some words gain the status of being a whole unique concept in itself because a technology/product gets invented. E.g., Xerox for photocopying, and Cola for carbonated drinks.
The earliest language created root words that influenced the sound of words across different languages. So newer languages have similar sounding words called "cognates". E.g., Father (English), Padre (Italian), Sanskrit (Pitar).
Some words emerge in one society and spread across other parts of the world. E.g., Coffee, Taxi, Telephone
When an infant begins to develop the mouth and speech centers of the brain, only a few simple sounds are possible. Like Ma & Pa. These are frequently made in association with a parent holding the infant. So they became universal sounds to indicate parents.
Huh? is a conversational repair mechanism that makes one person clarify what they are talking about. This word evolved universally across all languages because it needed to be a simple sound, a sound that feels like a question, but also jarring and interrupting to restart a conversation.
onomatopoeias – words that describe sounds. Shush, hiss, kaboom, aaaaarghh are all universally understood because they literally describe the sound. So, the sound of the word is equal to the meaning of the word. These are a subset of a larger phenomena called "iconicity".