The World of Cross-Linguistic Onomatopoeia
Sounds that elude us & our feeble attempts to recreate them.
One of the major principles in understanding human language is the arbitrariness of the linguistic sign. That is, there is nothing inherently “cat”-like about an actual cat that compels us to combine a /k/, /æ/, and /t/ to represent its /k/ + /æ/ + /t/-like essence. Maybe that’s why “cat” is represented as “miv” in Hmong, “gato” in Spanish, “kissa” in Finnish, and “ologbo” in Yoruba.
But there is one possible exception to this principle: onomatopoeia.
Part of this might come from our love of storytelling. If I witnessed someone angrily slapping her son across the face with a giant slab of kimchi and I wanted to tell my friend about the noise it made, what could I say? "And then it hit him with this resounding…” What? p-TK? b-FWP? pf-fLK?
In the end, nothing feels satisfactory enough to capture the hearty thwack of the kimchi slap (not even thwack). Darn you, lips, tongue, and larynx! You are so great for so many things, but also so limited.
Because of our anatomical and linguistic restrictions, humans have come up with a rich collection of words by which we attempt to imitate the sounds of our world. Sometimes there is a bit of an inherent quality to these words that we latch onto — even with some cross-linguistic agreement — but other sounds are harder for us to form (and even harder for us to agree on).
Below are some cross-linguistic examples of our collective attempts to pin down the sounds that often elude us.
The sound we make to represent screaming generally has a lot of “aaa.” (Checks out.)
Basque: ai, aiei, epa
Hindi: आहा (àhhà), वाह-वाह (hhàvh-hhàvh)
Italian: ahi, ahia, ohi
Thai: อ๊าก (ak), ;ว๊าก (wak), โอ๊ย (oi), อ๊าย (ai)
Pausing and thinking frequently includes nasals like /m/ and /n/…
Cantonese: 嗯 (m6, m3)
German: äh, ähm
Marathi: हम्ऽ (hmm)
Portuguese: ããã, âââ, hmm
…and elongated vowel sounds.
Bulgarian: ъъъ (aaa)
Japanese: アーノ (āno), エート (ēto)
Polish: hmmm, yyy, eee
Turkish: ııı, ee, hmm
To hush someone, we prefer alveolar fricatives like /s/ and post-alveolar fricatives like “sh.”
Afrikaans: sjoes, sjuut
Catalan: xxt, xst, pst, xit, xist
Korean: 쉿 (swit)
Hungarian: pissz, psszt
Something about the sound of roosters and chickens make us want to use a lot of /k/…
Bengali: kuk-ku-ruk-kooo
Hebrew: קוּקוּרִיקוּ (quuquuriqu)
Malayalam: കൊക്കരക്കോ(kokarakkoo)
Ukranian: кукуріку (koo-ku-ri-koo)
But we don’t agree on what initial consonant we should use for birds chirping.
Armenian: ճիւ ճիւ (jiv jiv)
Portuguese: piu piu
Indonesian: cit-cit, cicitcuit
Sinhalese: කුමු-කුමු (kumu kumu)
The noise that cats make seems to have something /m/-like about it…
Kazakh: мияу-мияу (mijau-mijau)
Tagalog: meyaw, miyaw, ngiyaw
Persian: میومیو (mioo mioo)
Catalan: marramèu, mèu
But initial consonants for dog noises are all over the place.
Mandarin: 汪汪 (wāng wāng)
Danish: vuf vuf, vov vov, bjæf bjæf
Basque: au-au, txau-txau (small dogs), zaunk-zaunk (big dogs)
Russian: гав-гав (gav gav, big dogs), тяф-тяф (tyaf tyaf, small dogs)
Cows solidly seem to moo…
French: meuh, mou
Korean: 음매 (eum-mae)
Thai: มอ (mo)
Finnish: ammuu, muu, möö
But we have no clue what elephants say.
Dutch: toet
Indonesian: ngoah
Vietnamese: ré, rống
Japanese: パオーン (paōn)
In the end, many human attempts to imitate non-human sounds will fall short (unless, that is, you’re a beatboxer?). Speakers of each language use the resources that they have to do their best — and maybe it’s a very human thing to not let our restrictions stop us from trying to do what might otherwise seem impossible.
What other interesting cross-linguistic onomatopoeia have you learned about or heard? Let me know in the comments below! See you next Tuesday.
once again the linguistic GOAT puts out another gem.
Question inspired by your paragraph on the "arbitrariness of linguistic sign": Do you have thoughts on how (I believe) humans associate certain sounds with certain... idk shapes? across cultures? I remember hearing this once - these researchers showed two shapes, one spiky and one rounded, to these tribes of people somewhere and told them one was named keke and one was named bobo and like a significant majority of the ppl thought keke was the spiky one. That always blows my mind, would like to hear your thoughts on that whole shebang if it's true and not just some old wives tale I heard long ago
One of the things I love so much about your newsletter is that you introduce us to so many languages! As someone who isn't all that great at learning other languages, I'm in awe of you.