"Ahia!"

I stubbed my toe a few months ago and yelped "Ouch!" Everyone in the vicinity started to laugh, not at my pain, but at my word choice. They even attempted to replicate the exclamation for personal amusement, but were unsuccessful ("Owsh!"). Evidently, ow and ouch are completely foreign concepts here. They say ahia [pronounced: eye-yuh] instead. When I found this out, I tried to avoid using the English expressions and incorporate the Italian counterpart into my vocabulary. At times of sudden pain, though, this is almost impossible. Today, however, when I hit my head on a shelf, I screeched "AHIA!" very loudly and very naturally. I'm quite proud of myself for this :)