Re: Animals' talk (jara: German letter names)

Arthaey Angosii writes:
 > Emaelivpar Jake X:
 > >Interesting.  I think in English you can say either.  The dog says, "bark,"
 > >or the dog barks. What determines which dog is assigned which sound?
 > >I am a native english speaker, but they seem to me randomly chosen when
 > >spoken.  Anyone?
 >
 > "Woof" sounds friendly to me, whereas "bark" could be more aggressive, or
 > at least louder/noiser/more enthusiastic.  "Arf" sounds like a little dog
 > or a half-hearted bark.  Just my personal impressions, mind you.  :)
 >
I'd agree, but I tend to think of "bark" as a verb, and "woof" or
"arf" or "ruff" as the sound made.  Or "bow-wow", which doesn't sound
much like a dog to me.

Cats can mew, as well as meowing.  Both can serve as either a verb or
a sound, although "mew" is more likely to be a verb.  Cats can also
yowl, although this is is a different sound, and not restricted to
cats.

To extend this a little beyond the English , I have here an article by
T.R. Reid from the 1992 edition of _International Wildlife_ (from my
archives) which includes a number of the sounds attributed to animals
in Japanese.

|When Asian animals do speak, they are puported to have different
|sounds than their Western cousins.  Japanese dogs bark "wahn-wahn",
|lambs go "may, may" and mice "chu-chu".  On the other hand, a Japanese
|cat's "neeyah, neeyah" sounds a lot like an English-speaker's "meow."
|The Japanese word for the way a rooster greets the dawn -
|"koh-ke-kohkoh, koh-ke-kohkoh" - sounds more like the real thing than
|"cockle-doodle-doo" ever did.

(The spelling appears to be based on what will be understood as
phonetic by an English speaker, rather than on any standard
romanization of Japanese, and there is not a lot of data, but I
include this as it was this article which first introduced me to the
idea that the words for animal sounds varied with language.)

A google search reveals the following page, which has some more
information on Japanese animal sounds.

http://www.thejapanesepage.com/animal.htm

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