So i was talking to a friend of mine (in english) who is from Japan and somehow the topic of animal sounds came up. Now usually i’m well aware of the fact that just because thats the way it’s done here in the states doesn’t mean thats the way its done everywhere else. For some reason though i was shocked to find out that after going through a list of animals almost none of them matched. I assumed that if a cow goes MOO in California then it must go MOO in Tokyo too. I understand the difference in languages might cause some variance in pronunciation but i guess i never really thought of my animal sounds as english translations of how animals go, instead i saw them as attempts to replicate a sound which would be somewhat independent (not entirely) of what part of the world you were from and what language you spoke.
So for all you international dopers, what noises do your animals make??
Heres a short list of mine and i in no way intend for theses to be representative of how everyone here in the states makes theirs. Please feel free to add more to the list.
Garrison Keller had a show where they did the different animal sounds for multiple countries. It was the one of the funniest skits I remember them doing on A Prairie Home Companion.
I believe in Japan, cats say “Nya nya” instead of “Meow meow.”
I think in Spanish-speaking countries, baby chicks say “Pio pio” instead of “Peep peep.”
Japanese: I picked a co-worker’s brain for some of these, as I didn’t know about half offhand. I’m using a macron ˆ to represent a long vowel, doubled letters to represent glottal stops. All vowels are basic, like Spanish, if you’re familiar with that language.
Dog — wan-wan
Cow — mô-mô
Sheep — mê-mê
Bird — there’s no general bird sound. A couple of examples: sparrow – chun-chun (roughly like tweet-tweet); rooster – koke-kokkô; crow – kâ-kâ.
Pig — bû-bû
Horse — hi-hîn
Donkey — no sound. Donkeys were pretty much unknown in Japan until really recently and aren’t a popular animal in the cultural imagination.
On a side note, one of the things that annoys me about Japanese is the large number of giongo and gitaigo words, two categories of onomatopoeia. They’re used roughly like adverbs for expressing feelings and impressions of actions or occurrences. The problem for me is that since they’re almost always short repeated expressions — like the animal sounds shown above — they all sound like baby talk, i.e.: poo-poo, pee-pee, ba-ba.
There also doesn’t seem to be a good list or dictionary for them that I’ve found. You can pick them up in context very rarely, but otherwise you pretty much have to either learn them as a kid (yeah, I wish) or get a native to explain them to you. When I read Kiki’s Delivery Service (Majo no Takkyûbin) in Japanese, there were usually several of these stumbling blocks on practically every page. I’d be able to get the general idea, but a large part of the flavor of the language was contained in the onomatopoeic words, which made it frustrating for me. Adult-oriented books include less of them, but they still come up all the time. I still don’t have a very good handle on more than the most common of them.
Dogs: “hau hau” or sometimes “vuh vuh” (to bark: haukkua)
Cats: “miau” or sometimes “nau” (to meow: naukua)
Cows: “muu” (ammua)
Sheep: “mää” or “bää” (määkiä)
Birds: depends on the bird. Chicks usually say “piip piip” (piipittää…do you see a pattern here?).
Pigs: “röh röh”, piglets sometimes “nöf nöf”. (röhkiä)
Horses: “ihahaa” (well, this one’s “hirnua”, but I guess horses do make this kind of “hirrrrrrn” noise)
Donkeys: dude, I have no idea about this one.
Ooh, more! (Can you tell I’ve been spending time with a two-year-old lately?)
Snakes: “ssssssssss” (sihistä)
Bears (and lions and tigers, for that matter): “mur mur” (“murista”), the latter two also roar or “karjua”, but according to my two-year-old expert, that sound is just this incoherent yelling sort of noise.
Also, according to her, fish say “blb blb”, elephants say “truuuuuuuuut” and crocodiles go “YAAAAARRRRRRRR” and grab your face.
I’ve never understood the “oink” thing with pigs. I raise pigs and to my ears the most common sound they make is “burt”, or “burrrt”. Which is why I name all of my pigs Burt.
Growing up on a farm, I noticed that bellaring cows would have to inhale between sounds, creating a “haaa” sound. My brother and I determined that cows say “roo-ha.”
Also, on bicycle rides, we decided that dogs say “hebb-oo.” If you lower your voice and say it really fast, repeatedly, it sounds just like a dog that just noticed a kid riding by on a bike.
I would love to hear this, any idea how to find it? I googled every set of key words I could imagine and didn’t come up with anything.
I also want to say that I’ve never heard a normal, healthy rabbit making any kind of noise, much less “chui chui”. Also, “quiquiriqui” makes so much more sense than “cock-a-doodle-doo”.
