Regional cockcrows (and other noises)
I’ve always been a little bit fascinated with the words that different languages use to describe the noises that animals make. I know that these words are affected by the phonemes that each language has at its disposal, but it wasn’t until recently that I realised that the actual sounds that the animals make have regional differences, too.
Last time I talked a little bit about Dr Victoria de Rijke, or Dr Quack, and her studies on regional differences in duck quacks. She’s also headed up an initiative called The Quack Project, which has collected animal sounds from 15 different languages. Cutely, the recordings are all of young children. MP3s in these languages, for cockerel, cow, dog, duck, frog, horse, and pig, are available here.
This page has a list of how you pronounce a pig’s sound (oink in English), from snork in Afrikaans to the quite different ood in Thai. One of the sounds which brings the most argument and laughs between languages is that of the cockcrow. Bootstrappin’ has a great post about the differences and a long list of regional rooster sounds, including the Spanish quiquiriquí and the Icelandic gaggala gaggala gú. The majority of the noises have a hard k sound, like the French cocorico and the Dutch kukeleku.
But how much of these differences are because the actual animals make different noises? I haven’t found a resource that records animal sounds from around the world, but a Thai language blog has at least compared Thai and American roosters. Do you agree with the author that Thai roosters need to try harder?
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Charles Lucas said,
September 13, 2010 @ 6:27 pm
I have frequently been asked about my experience teaching English to university students in China.
Once I got myself in really big trouble.
A girl came in late to class after lunch. Breathless, she explained that she had overslept (students in China have a two‑hour lunch break and they like to sleep). She went on to say that she had been dreaming of ducks.
I said, ‘So I suppose you woke at the quack of dawn.’
Ho-ho. Very funny. But I got blank looks.
Well, you see, in the Chinese language, ducks do not say quack. (I’ve forgotten what they do say—it’s entirely possible I have repressed it.)
So I explained about ‘quacking’.
And then I dug my grave. I started in on the ‘crack of dawn’.
But in the Chinese language there is no expression equivalent to the ‘crack of dawn’.
So I found myself drawing pictures on the blackboard to illustrate ‘dawn’ and the ‘crack’ thereof.
And then I tried explaining why ‘quack’ of dawn might be remotely humorous. That’s what sealed my fate. The Chinese word for ‘crack’ does not rhyme with the sound that Chinese ducks make.
I had a picture of a duck with a speech balloon saying ‘quack’. I had an arrow from the balloon to the sun peeping over the horizon.
I gave up when I noticed that the students were looking at me as though I was a raving lunatic.
Wendy said,
September 22, 2010 @ 9:35 pm
Charles, great story! I for one appreciate the pun. It’s never quite as good when you have to explain it, though, especially when the joke ends up involving so many levels. Idioms are always difficult to explain, let alone when there is onomatopoeia as well. I can’t remember what sound Chinese ducks make either. I’ll have to remember to ask someone.