Female chicken, reviewing her Euchre score– Buck, buck, buck, buck, buck
in Dutch:
Cat - miauw
Duck - kwaak kwaak
Rooster - kukelekuuuuu
Chicken - tok tok toooook tok
Pig - knor knor
Cow - boe
Horse - hihihihihi
Bee- zoemmmm
Other animals? - Sheep - behehehe. Crow - kaa kaaa.
How do you replicate a sneeze? - Hatsjoe!
A scream? - HAAAAAAAAA
A fart? - pfeeiuw [soft one]
The act of swallowing? - gluk
Other human noises? - Burp - buuugh. Hiccup - hik. Orgasm - Woeeeee.
The French mother of a friend rendered a purring cat as “Ron ron, ron ron.” With onamatopoeically rolled "r"s of course.
Da Do ron ron, Da do ron ron?
My mom used to sing that song to me as a lullaby when I was little. I still love it.
*De colores, de colores se visten los campos en la primavera
De colores, de colores de los pajaritos que vienen de afuera
De colores, de colores en el arco iris que viene lucir
Y por eso los grandes amores de muchos colores me gustan a mí [bis]
Canta el gallo, canta el gallo con el quiri quiri quiri quiri quiri
La gallina, la gallina con el cara cara cara cara cara
Los polluelos, los polluelos con el pío pío pío pío pi
Y por eso los grandes amores de muchos colores me gustan a mí [bis]*
I use my powers only for Good.
Babelfish renders this line as “The hen, the hen with the expensive face expensive expensive face”
In Middle Egyptian, the word for donkey is spelled aA (well, I mean, they wrote it in hieroglyphs, but the sounds they used were one like an ayin, or guttural Arabic “ah” sound, followed by probably a glottal stop, and I wrote it using the typographical conventions for transcription). So there’s some onomatopoeia for you. I believe the same word evolved into Coptic EIW (W being an omega because I’m too lazy to figure out how to post Greek letters), pronounced something like “EEEEE-OHHH.” OK, so maybe they didn’t extend it like that, but I like to so I remember what the word means.
I took Russian for a couple years in college. The only one I remember is the dog, which goes (transliterated, of course): “Kaf! Kaf!”
–Cliffy
I heard there are pig farms in Israel and most supermarkets have a ham and bacon stall somewhere in the corner. Not true?
What about spitting? I used to have some of the Charles Schultz’s Peanuts books in French, and I remember when Snoopy spits Woodstock back into his nest in one frame, instead of “ptui!”, the sound is rendered “toc!”
AwSnappity,
Here’s another link you might be intersted in. I forget how I came across this, but I seem to remember Cecil discussing the topic once before.
Yes and no. There is pig farming in Israel, although nowhere near the scale of chicken, beef and turkey; and while most supermarkets in Israel sell only kosher food, there are a few non-kosher chains, and plenty of non-kosher butchers. While the largest consumers of pork are, of course, the Russian immigrants, many Israelis eat it as well. The Asian place I went to on Friday had bacon in some of its dishes, although I myself didin’t have any.
Could this come from German via Yiddish? I noticed my German friends say ‘apchee’ for sneeze too.
Very likely. A lot of Hebrew slang (and that’s what this thread is about, after all - children’s slang) somes from Yiddish, or even directly from German: for instance, the commonly used word for “bite” (as in “gimme a bite of your sandwich”) is biss.
Swedish:
Cat - Mjau
Duck - Kvack
Rooster - Kuckeliku
Pig - Noff (imagine two dots above the o; I’m at a non-Swedish keyboard)
Cow - Mu
Horse - Gnagg (imagine two dots above the a)
Bee - Surr
Sneeze - Atjoo
A scream - Aaaaaaa, perhaps.
A fart - Prutt
The act of swallowing - Gulp