Monday, August 21, 2006

Animal Sounds

~Working at a children's school, I use animal words and puppets a lot, which kids love. One of the most intersting things I've discovered about the Japanese language is that animal sounds are, in most cases, completely different from their English equivalents. Here are some examples:

^Cat (neko in Japanese).
English: MEOW MEOW.
Japanese: NYA NYA.

^ Dog (inu).
English: BOW WOW/RUFF RUFF/ARF ARF.
Japanese: WAN WAN; sounds like the number ONE.
This one confused me at first, until I heard some of my younger students making the sound. You have to say from the back of your throat, and, well, bark it to make WAN sound like what a dog says.

^ Pig (buta).
English: OINK OINK.
Japanese: BUHI BUHI or BU BU.
I honestly have no idea about this one.

^ Frog (kaeru).
English: RIBBIT RIBBIT.
Japanese: GERO GERO.

^ Chicken/Rooster (ondori).
English: COCK-A-DOODLE-DOO!
Japanese: KO-KE-KOK-KO!
This one actually makes more sense than its English equivalent.

^ Cow (ushi).
English: MOO MOO.
Japanase: MO MO; sounds like 'MOW the lawn', or a certain bartender.

^ Monkey (saru).
 English: OOOH OHH AAH EEE, and so forth.
Japanese: UKI UKI. Sounds like 'ooh' from "ooh, ahh!", and 'key' like what you use to lock a door.

^ Fox (kitsune).
English: I can't think of a vocalization sound for a fox.
Japanese: KON KON.

^ Mouse (nezumi).
English: SQUEAK SQUEAK.
Japanese: CHUU CHUU.

^ Owl (fukuroo).
English: HOOT HOOT.
Japanese: HOO HOO.
Very close to the English sound, but without the 'T' sound on the end.

~Below is a picture I found here showing animals making their respective sounds in katakana:

More complete lists of Japanese animal sounds can be found here and here. If I stumble across any additional interesting sounds, I'll post them. Here's one more, just for fun:

^ Godzilla!
English: RRRROAR!!!
Japanese: GAO GAO!
~Oyasumi!

posted by David @ 7:11 PM   2 comments

2 Comments:

At Monday, 21 August, 2006, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Very interesting post. I liked the picture of "Smudge" at the beginning. A fox makes a very strange kind of howling noise - am sure there is a soundbite of it somewhere on the web. Wonder what the sound of a Moose is like in Japanese?

 
At Monday, 21 August, 2006, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Moose in Japan? Good name for a rock band.

 

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