Onomatopoeias

Onomatopeias are words with the aim of representing sounds and noises, which can be difficult and subjective and, of course, vary a lot from country to country. 

For example, there are dogs of all sorts of shapes and sizes, but they all seem to bark in a similar way. However, while in Portugal this sound is onomatopoeically translated as “au-au”, in Sweden it is “voff-voff” and, in Indonesia, “guk-guk”. It is interesting how the same sound can be written in different ways depending on the language, being almost impossible to recognize what it refers to in another. Another example is the sound we instinctively reproduce when we get hurt - “ouille” in French, but “autsch” in German and “ai” in Portuguese. There is also a big difference in the yawning sound, which is “hao” in Thai and “yawn” in English, but “fuwa” in Japanese.

Onomatopoeias are thus not just a matter of phonetics, but also of culture and perception, incorporated in many different ways into linguistic systems, and its role in oral language and transposition to writing should be remembered as an indicator of universality and, at the same time, of individual expression of each language or people.