I heard a comedian going on about this a few days ago. And it does seem considerable time and energy is spent on learning which animals make which noise, and the slightly weird sounds foreign animals in foreign languages make. Also, no one ever has actually heard a dog go “bow wow”.
I don’t agree this is wasted effort, exactly. Learning to talk is complex, and liking animals probably correlates well with empathy and agreeableness. The comedian found little use in adult life for knowing that French pigs go “gron gron” or English sheep go “baaa”. But if you ever find yourself talking with someone who doesn’t speak even a few words of your language, making animal noises remains a surprisingly effective icebreaker.
I have cat who clicks in a weird way. He meows but it comes out as little clickety clicks. I call him Ol’ Stutterin’ Jo. And say “spit it out, would ya!”
He’s not a bit bothered by it.
I say, I have learned tolerance from that cat.
Learning animal sounds as a stutterer was completely out of the question. Of course anything I had to say aloud in front of people, upon request was bad. But everyone thinks a young child can do it. So it was doubly degrading.
I had a cat that couldn’t meow. He could make all the regular cat noises: purrs, yowls, hisses, and so on. But instead of a “meeowww” to get my attention, the best he could do was a sharp and sudden “Wa!”, like a 1970s funk guitar.
I think they are generally learning how to make sounds that later become syllables. But also learning what animals exist in the world is important, especially for kids who may never see them.
So someone going for laughs rather than a genuine debate?
Having read English books to my own kids and taught English to kindergarten students in Taiwan, I disagree that “considerable time and energy” is spent learning animal sounds.
One of the Discworld books has a father reading a book of animal sounds to his son, and noting that they’re city people, and will most likely never see any of these animals live. No, a pig does NOT go “oink”; it goes “sizzle”.
Actually, it’s mildly surprising to me that Discworld cities don’t have pigs running around in the streets. Or at least live ones in the marketplaces, and being driven to and from there. It’s only relatively recently that Roundworld cities evicted most of the domestic animals.
There are efforts to use AI to decode the languages various species use to communicate with each other. Its going to be pretty impressive, maybe we can have more meaningful conversations with various social animals with larger brains (especially mammals)
Two hillbillies steal a pig and drive off in their pickup truck. They put a hat and a coat on the pig. The sheriff and his deputy stop them, and ask their names.
“Uh, Bill Johnson”.
“Uh, Joe Johnson”
“What’s your name?”, they ask the one in the middle.
“OINK!”
After they drive off, the sheriff tells the deputy, “That Oink Johnson is the ugliest man I’ve ever seen!”
Agreed. My sense is that kids are interested in animals and the sounds they make, so animal sounds are used to teach sounds (what sorts of sounds this language uses) and words (or proto words?)
