spring2006

I'm trying to teach Vince as much English as possible even though he's surrounded by Japanese. When he was one year old he surprised his mother and father (me) with how much English he was using: "A,B,'C'", "all done," "apple" (even when his mother says "ringo tabetai hito?" etc. Whenever he sees a dog he refers to it in kiddie Japanese: "wan wan." However, I'm trying to give him the English onomatopoeia (this means words that imitate sounds), "woof woof." I've told students in the past that the English is much closer to the actual sound a dog makes--but they disagreed! What do you think? Make a "woof woof" sound, then a "wan wan" sound and judge which is closer. Rika agreed that the English is closer (but it could just be our perception!). Her theory is that with Japanese the words are intended more as easy words for kids to say rather than exact imitations. Japanese certainly has a lot of these: "man man" meaning "eat," "boo" meaning "vehicle" (or "fart!") etc. There are a few in English, most notably "pee" or "pee-pee" for "shikko suru" (or just "shikko") and "poop" for "unchi." Anyway, we started comparing different animal onomatopoeia:

(Eng - Japanese - animal)
woof - wan - dog
meow - neow - cat
caw - ka - crow
moo - mo - cow
oink - ? - pig (bu-bu)
chirp or tweet- chu or chun? - bird
growl - ? - tiger
cluck - ? - chicken (kokeko)
ribbet - ? - frog (gero gero)
who - ? - owl (ho ho) (thanks to Wildriver-c for teaching me the 4 in parenthesis!)

I can't remember many of the Japanese! Actually, the only one that the English seems closer to the actual is "woof." Well, perhaps the crow is a little closer in English too. The others seems equal. What do you think?