Onomatopoeia, or Sound Words in Japanese
Onomatopoeia are the "sound words" that are all around us, and it's funny how they work differently in other languages. The word "boo" would be interpreted by native English speakers as expressing disapproval for something, or with an exclamation point ("boo!"), a word meant to scare someone. But in Japanese, the same sound (buu) is the "oink" sound a pig makes, or depending on intonation and the length of the vowel, the sound of flatulence. Once you've lived in Japan for a few years, you start to accept the Japanese sounds as reasonable representations of what we all hear, like nyan nyan for a cat, wan wan for a dog or kokekokko (roughly, koh-keh-KOH!-koh) for a rooster. And then you go to your home country to visit your family and you make some of these bizarre sounds around native English speakers, and they look at you like you're totally crazy.
Um, nyann?
posted by Peter in Japan at 5:59 PM
4 Comments:
This is one of the reasons why I love studying languages - it's fascinating to see how different similar things are interpreted in different languages.
By the way, I was wondering if you're going to get the mü-bot or mu-bot headphones back in stock some day? Mine broke recently, after a long time of faithful service. The problem is not the headphones, but me - I somehow manage to break even the best headphones (it's usually the cables getting too stressed, which is why I got a mu-bot in the first place. It lasted much, much longer than any other headphones I had.).
So, I'd be happy if you'd get them back in stock some day, as I'd like to order a new pair.
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7:36 PM
Haha, rooster sounds are fun. In Spanish, they apparently go "kikiri kikiri kiiii!"
2:25 AM
Actually, Peter, "nyan" is probably the closest-to-English-variant Japanese onomatopoeia I've heard. The rest... just don't make any sense. Funny enough, I heard the "boo" sound(boo-boo, actually)was used when someone said/did something incorrectly, like a buzzer. I think George Trombley of YesJapan also said something about it.
3:49 PM
The German onomatopoetic sounds for those animals would be "Wau wau" or "Wuff wuff" for a dog, "Kikeriki!" for a rooster, and "Miau" for a cat (the "miau" being pronounced nearly exactly like "meow" in English.)
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7:52 PM
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