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Onomatopoeia

Odyssey

How do animals sound across languages?

by Vivian Li
For many, our first memories of learning animal sounds include the song “Old MacDonald Had a Farm.” The song has been translated into at least 25 languages, and a curious finding reveals itself when we compare these translations: English cows go
“moo”
, while French cows go
“meuh”
, and Korean cows go
“음메”
. These differences raise the question: how can cultures hear the same physical sounds yet translate them into language so differently? Analyzing animal onomatopoeia across languages can demystify how we shape sound into meaning.

Languages differ in their characters and spelling, so we can use a common tool of linguists to effectively compare how they sound. The International Phonetic Alphabet, or IPA, is used to show how words are pronounced in any language. Each letter in the alphabet represents a singular sound, also known as a phone. IPA phones give us insight into the place of articulation (the part of the mouth that’s used to produce the sound), manner of articulation (the way the sound is produced), and voicing (whether the vocal folds come together). Here’s how a cat’s sound in English is transcribed to IPA:
meow
[
m
i
a
w
]
ENGLISH
“Meow” becomes a string of phones:
[m]
,
[i]
,
[a]
, and
[w]
. Let’s take a look at how a few animals sound across 21 popular languages. In the following examples, phones are grouped and color-coded to show their phonetic similarity. For instance,
[m]
and
[n]
are both nasal consonants and serve a similar purpose as the start of the cat sound, so they’re grouped together for simplicity.
[i]
and
[j]
both make an “eee” sound, so they’re both shown as yellow.

Here’s how a cat sounds in 21 languages. Looking at the color-coded phones, some patterns are already clear.

Cats’ onomatopoeia translations are pretty consistent, with 14 languages matching the trending pattern: anasal , ahigh front vowel , alow vowel , and ahigh back vowel .

A few other languages almost match the trend, but not quite. Japanese, for example, is missing the finalhigh back vowel . The

[aː]
sound is extended instead of being closed by a back vowel, likely because Japanese has a tendency toward open syllables.

Turkish and Ukrainian share a slight difference with the trend, ending with alabiodental consonant

[v]
instead of the vowel
[u]
. This pattern could exemplify an "areal feature,” where languages in the same region share characteristics.

Indonesian, Korean, and Vietnamese also deviate in similar ways. Both Indonesian and Korean add avelar nasal [ŋ](

“ng”
) to the end. Indonesian and Vietnamese keep the
[m]
and
[o]
, but replace the two middle vowels with a relaxed
[e]
sound instead. On the other hand, Korean drops the [m] but keeps the middle vowels.

A bubble chart sums up the observations nicely — [m], [i], [a], and [u] are shared among nearly all 21 languages, though in different combinations. A few other patterns exist, and no phone stands on its own.

Next, let’s observe how a duck sounds in each of the 21 languages.

Only four languages match the most common trend: avelar consonant , ahigh back vowel , alow front vowel , and anothervelar consonant .

Several languages simplify the main trend by dropping one or more of the four phones, yet still capturing the essence of the sound.

German, Polish, and Turkish keep thevelar consonant and thelow front vowel , but swap out thehigh back vowel for alabiodental consonant instead.

This conversion from

[u]
or
[w]
to
[f]
or
[v]
follows the same trend that we observed in cats. Turkish makes this swap with both animals, likely because the language avoids diphthongs and doesn’t include [w] in its native phonetic inventory.

Six languages have elements of the trend, but end the word with different consonants, all with different places and manners of articulation. Czech opts for apalato-alveolar affricate , French and Hindi substitute analveolar nasal , and Greek, Hungarian, Thai, and Vietnamese use abilabial stop .

Russian and Ukrainian use anpalatalized trill , which are distinct from the other languages but shared with each other — likely due to their geographic proximity and their shared language ancestor, Old East Slavic.

The bubble chart shows that although no singular trend emerges,

[a]
and
[k]
stand out as phones that are common to nearly all languages. In fact, [a] is universal to a duck’s sound in every language shown.

Finally, here’s how a pig sounds in each of the 21 languages. There’s no all-encompassing trend, but rather several pattern groups that can be identified.

Five languages share in a common trend: amid back vowel , ahigh front vowel , anasal consonant , and avelar stop . Hindi and Indonesian use a simpler version of the trend, each leaving out one or more phones.

The second main pattern is characterized by the use of avelar or glottal consonant and atrill or tap . Several languages start with this pair of phones, and Russian and Ukrainian match onomatopoeic words exactly. Arabic and Chinese deviate slightly, starting with

[xn]
instead. The languages share many common phones, though in different sequences.

A few outliers remain, each using thehigh back vowel sound that was also a part of several languages from the second pattern. The Thai and Vietnamese words closely mirror each other, both starting with aglottal stop and ending their first syllable with thealveolar stop

[t]
— likely due to their geographic proximity.

The bubble chart illustrates just how fragmented the onomatopoeic patterns are in pigs. Unlike with cat sounds, where many phones were common to at least 18 languages, most phones for pigs are only common to about half of the languages.

Onomatopoeia offers a fascinating glimpse into the interaction between sound and language. The way humans mimic animal sounds reflects not only shared biological instincts but also distinct cultural filters. Although onomatopoeia intends to imitate faithfully, its differences are ultimately far from arbitrary. In trying to capture the same auditory essence, English interprets a pig’s sound as
[ojŋk]
, yet Hungarian hears
[røf]
, and Vietnamese hears
[ʔut it]
. Even among the three animals discussed, cats are more consistent in their sound interpretation, while pigs are more variable — whether because pigs’ vocalizations are innately more complex, or because they call upon different phonotactic rules.

The trends uncovered in animal sounds — like the recurrence of
[m]
,
[i]
,
[a]
, and
[u]
across languages for cats — demonstrate a universal ability for sound interpretation to transcend linguistic differences. In fact, English, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish all share very similar onomatopoeic sounds across all three animals. The
[miau]
trend shared among 15 languages could explain how “sad AI cat song” stories on social media can effortlessly relate to a global audience.

On the other hand, deviations highlight the unique preferences and creative adaptations of each language, such as Turkish and Ukrainian ending with
[v]
or Korean and Indonesian adding
[ŋ]
. There are countless reasons behind the similarities and differences in onomatopoeic translations, from geographic proximity and shared language family groups to different phonemic inventories and speech preferences. These variations remind us that even the simplest forms of language carry deep cultural influence.

This interplay between universality and diversity extends beyond animal sounds, touching on how humans perceive and encode the world. Onomatopoeia is a seemingly trivial aspect of language, but one that reflects broader cultural and linguistic processes. Exploring these differences in sound perception challenges us to think critically about the assumptions we bring to language. If a cow’s moo can interpreted so differently across cultures, how many other sounds might we experience uniquely through our linguistic filters? Whether cows go
“moo”
,
“meuh”
, or
“음메”
, onomatopoeia connects us to the natural world in a way that transcends linguistic boundaries. It invites us to play with sound, to embrace the quirks of language, and to recognize our shared instinct to listen and interpret. In doing so, onomatopoeia reminds us that even the simplest of sounds can tell a universal story, endlessly fascinating in its infinite variations.

Methodology

Every language differs in its usage of onomatopoeia, and only one word could be chosen to represent each language’s representation of each animal’s sound. Many languages might have multiple onomatopoeic words for an animal, while some may hardly use onomatopoeia in daily language. All onomatopoeia translations were sourced from the Duolingo blog post, “Do cats ’meow’ in every language?” by Mykhaylo Zakryzhevskyy and Dr. Alexander Mendes, aside from cow sounds, which were sourced from Omniglot. These onomatopoeic words were then transcribed phonetically into IPA using Epitran (Carnegie Mellon University), XPF Corpus (Brown University), InternationalPhoneticAlphabet.org, and OpenL. Audio recordings for each onomatopoeic word were generated using TTSMaker, an online tool that creates text-to-speech recordings in many languages. Sources used for analysis are listed below.

Sources

  1. IPA interactive charts (International Phonetic Association)
  2. Phonetics (University of Sheffield)
  3. Phonemic Inventories and Cultural and Linguistic Information Across Languages (American Speech-Language-Hearing Association)
  4. Speech Accent Archive (George Mason University)
  5. Sounds All Around (Chapman, J.)
  6. Translating Onomatopoeia: An Attempt toward Translation Strategies (Azari, R. and Sharififar, M.)
  7. How Similar Are Russian And Ukrainian? (Babbel)
  8. A Comparison between Onomatopoeia and Sound Symbolism in Persian and English (Aliyeh, K. and, Zeinolabedin, R.)
  9. Natural Phonology of Japanese (Smith, E. R.)
  10. Areas, Areal Features, and Areality (Cambridge University)