Animal Sounds in Different Languages
Written By: Usree Bhattacharya on January 27, 2009
7 Comments
I was rereading Saussure for a class today, when I was struck by his comment that in French, dogs go “ouaoua,” while in English they bark out “bow-wow”!
I looked online for resources on animal sounds in different languages, and here are some interesting links I found:
Quack-project.com, which has actual sound files.
The University of Adelaide’s Animal Sounds page, text only, the world’s largest such database.
and, Animal Sounds in Foreign Languages, text only.
Are English-speaking dogs that say “woof woof” instead of “bow wow” using a regional dialect, or what?
According to Fitzy, “woof woof” is the vernacular.
how about multilingual dogs/animals?
my dogs understand english and spanish! i can tell them sit in english, and they sit. my mom says sit in spanish, and they get that too!
my mom loves to tell people that her dogs are bilingual. she is really proud of them 🙂
Interesting. Something I had never really given any thought to even though I speak 2 languages. I guess they were fairly similar so I never paid any attention to this.
I do think that dogs pay more attention to the tone of voice and the body language.
I agree with Drik, Dogs will obide an owner based on their tone and posture, You can say anyhthing to a dog and it will sit down it you point and look stern.
Here a good website on the topic: http://animalsounds.kuglstatter.com
A video about animal sounds in different langauges 🙂
http://vimeo.com/25215616