Monday 20 February 2023

When is a woof not a woof? by Joan Lennon


Jan Brueghel the Elder (1568-1625) 
(wiki commons)

The answer to the question 'When is a woof not a woof?' is 'When it's a wau.' Which it is in Germany. 

Humans imitate animal sounds differently in different places. I grew up in Canada thinking that dogs said bow-wow until I moved to the UK and learned that British dogs say woof woof. And it doesn't stop there. In Bahasa Indonesian, they say guk guk; in Dutch they say blaf; and in Korean they say meong.

What about frogs? In English they say ribbut; in Italian it's cra cra; Mandarin frogs say guō-guō; Thai frogs go op op; in Hungarian they say brekeke; and in Japanese it's something like kero-kero.

Or mice. They may squeak in English, but in Dutch they go piep; in Italian it's squitt squitt; Swedish mice say pip pip; and in Germany they go i i i i.

Cats sound a lot alike in a lot of languages - versions of miaow - except in Korea where they say yaong.

But pig noises are all over the shop, from hunk hunk (Albanian) to noff noff (Swedish) to groin groin (French) to knor knor (Dutch).

So the next time you read or write a picture book rich in animal sounds, spare a thought for any translators. It's may not be just the human words they'll need to translate!

What did animals say where you grew up?



Print in the Edo-Tokyo Museum, Japan 
(wiki commons)


Joan Lennon website

3 comments:

Anne Booth said...

That's a great question!

Polly said...

Woof has definitely overtaken bow wow in North America, I always seem to have to translate the bow wows to woofs in storytime, and certainly I grew up (in southern Ontario, Canada) learning woof from my Toronto and Michigan (but an army brat, so really all over), parents!
When I see we have a very diverse crowd in storytime, I often ask people to say whatever the animal says in their first language, which is tons of fun!

Joan Lennon said...

That's really interesting about woof - and your storytime sessions sound great!