Onomatopoeia (#83)

A complicated term for uncomplicated words. An onomatopoetic word imitates the sound, which it describes. Common examples are animal sounds (I introduced it in fact #76 about dik-diks):

• Cat: meow, de: miau (ok, feels weird to give a translation for that)

• Dog: woof, de: wau

• Cow: moo, de: muh

• Rooster: cock-a-doodle-doo, de: kikeriki. Vietnamese: ò ó o. (What have they done to their roosters?!)

The list extends beyond animal sounds: zip, hiccup, splash...

Japanese love Onomatopoeia and take it to another level. For example, they differentiate between a small round thing rolling around (korokoro) and a bigger round thing rolling around (gorogoro).

Onomatopoetic words also have a cultural aspect. Which sounds are used to create onomatopoetic words highly depend on the phonetic range a language has to offer. Onomatopoeia also forms a substantial part of many languages, especially in those spoken in certain parts of Africa and East Asia. In these cultures, you're deemed eloquent and expressive, when you use onomatopoeia. In Western cultures, the use of onomatopoetic words is not equally prestigious and eurocentric linguists devalued them as a "need to imitate everything perceptible in retarded societies". Ironically, there's also an onomatopoetic word describing people, which are perceived as primitive and uncivilized: barbaric (becuase everything sounded like “bar bar bar”).

Onomatopoetic words are only a subset of ideophones, and you bet I'm going to tell you more about them in another fact.