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Level: Onomatopoeia

Learn Japanese with JapanesePod101.com! If you’re a pet owner, you know how animals tend to become part of the family. In fact, we talk about animals all the time. And, you probably use onomatopoeia to describe the sounds they make, like “woof woof” and “meow.” The Japanese language is no different. You might even hear Japanese children referring to dogs using onomatopoeia.

In this Japanese lesson, you’ll discover the onomatopoeia used to describe animal sounds. The focus is the always popular dog (wanwan) and cat (nyannyan). But, you’ll also find a handy chart with some Japanese onomatopoeia and their corresponding animals, from frogs to pigs. As a bonus, there’s a fun practice portion that asks you to fill in the correct animal sound onomatopoeia.

learn Japanese onomatopoeia, animal sounds in Japanese


This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 21st, 2009 at 6:30 pm and is filed under Onomatopoeia . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

38 Responses to “Onomatopoeia #2 - Japanese Animal Sounds”

JapanesePod101.com says:

Konnich wa Mina-san, Which onomatopoeia animal sounds seem most like your image of the actual sounds? Which sounds seem like a stretch?

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neil.m4 says:

Animal noises is really scraping the barrel when it comes to language teaching. What are you going to do for the rest of the course if you’re filling with animal noises already? Maybe you should just give it up and do something more adult like current news stories. Just a suggestion. 頑張ってください。 :shock:

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仁居流 says:

Neil.m4: From one Neil to another, perhaps they are trying to reach all levels of learning with these lessons. I agree the learning seems a bit minimal and perhaps they need to explain the purpose for the series more. I believe the staff has said in the past that there are plenty of advanced resources already on the web such as daily news broadcasts, weather reports and so forth in pure Japanese. There is no concurrent translation, which is what you may be looking for, but that would take a tremendous amount of resources to do on a regular basis. :mrgreen:

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仁居流 says:

Little children in Japan calling a dog “wanwan” is no different than in English when very little children call the animal by the sound they make. Very common in any language no?:???:

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AD says:

To Neil:m4

If you could write in Japanese everything you just wrote in English then I’ll be convinced that you’re ready for news and other adult-type reading.

Gambatte, dude.

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ggenglish says:

. i’m very interested to see where this series goes. when i try to read mangas i always get lost in the onomatopoeias. i have found websites that list out common ones but its almost like its another language in itself.

who’s the governing body of these translations though? i really want to understand how wanwan came about for dog. to me its not a happy dog sound. it’d be like english language using yelpyelp instead of woofwoof. :cry:

btw, this episode was NSFW. i was laughing out loud pretty hard during the animal sound/sakura-sensei translation. too funny. i don’t know how you weren’t laughing more like the golden week cast you guys did in the newbie series where the both of you were giggling like school girls. i laugh pretty hard with that one too with you even though i have no idea whats so funny.

:twisted:

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Green Airplane says:

you know, you say ‘kerokero’ and I immediately think of Natsuko-san :lol:
Sometimes it feels as if I knew you guys… it’s a little weird actually… :smile:

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仁居流 says:

A resource that has been mentioned in the forum as a great resource for reading and vocab—Japanese children stories, often with someone reading.

A good somewhat advanced resource for Neil.m4 and others. Its fun! :smile:

http://hukumusume.com/douwa/betu/index.html

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Mayumi says:

Mina-san
Thank you for your feedback! It’s really valuable for us to improve our lessons! :dogeza: We’re going to introduce more onomatopoeia which are useful to make your conversation more vividly! :kokoro:

仁居流-san,
Thank you for sharing the interesting link with us! :dogeza:

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ジャービジ says:

I know this format is all about focusing on the words, but I don’t think that’s any reason to drop the dialogues. They’re so short and have such a low English:Japanese ratio that I don’t bother listening to them more than once. I prefer the format in the book I have, which has a dialogue containing 6-8 onomatopoeia words, followed by explanations and example sentences. With an audio dialogue to review and shadow, the words and their usage would really stick (something the book lacked). That’s just my view anyway.

I find that gitaigo is really useful, since, with just a few syllables, you can communicate feelings/emotions that can be hard to describe in English. Translating them often requires a whole sentence, I find. They sound funny, but don’t come across as inarticulate or dumb, which I like as well :mrgreen: The last 10 or so I’ve tried to look up were not in the dictionary though. How are you supposed to find out what they mean? :???:

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neil.m4 says:

Perhaps I can present a compromise solution. Actually the only issue I have with a Wednesday vocabulary spot is the amazing descent from 四字熟語 (which I found extremely useful in my daily life) to animal noises which - sorry I don’t need. On reflection, however, I realize that both lesson types are kind of lacking in content in comparison to the other lessons on the site - and the idea then occurred to me that a combined lesson of キラキラ・ツルツル type words along with a couple of 四字熟語 each time might be the sensible way to actually really provide something for everyone. It can’t be that difficult to come up with 四字熟語 - you only have to pick up any electronic dictionary to access hundreds of them - and if you leave out the cultural baggage and just explain usage, then its not even that much hard work. Good idea?? I think so.

Neil

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iambatdan says:

ジャービジ:
There is a book which contains every one in the Japanese language (several thousand I believe) which my Japanese teacher has, can’t remember the name but I’m sure if you’re that bothered you could find it online.

Neil:
Onomatopoeia in the Japanese language cover much more than animal sounds, including ways to describe weather, emotions etc. and are used in formal language as well as in everyday conversations.
Generally it’s considered an effective teaching method to start simple and build from there.
Perhaps try having a basic idea of the subject before you start kicking off about it?

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neil.m4 says:

悪いけど、他のお客さんのことを言うのはまずいと思います。この先に言ったとおりで自分の電池辞書にも四字熟語がたくさん入っています。でも問題のは量があまる多いので、どちらが習えば良いかと分かるわけがないと思います。その点ではこのようなサイトは自分の役に立ってると思うようになりました。以上です。

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neil.m4 says:

BTW: The name of the book is Perapera.

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Daro-san says:

Well I’m from Venezuela and our native language is spanish.

In spanish some of the onomatopeia we use are: (they’re written in spanish along with the english pronounciation besides and the english onomatopeia I’m referring to)

guau guau: wow wow —> woof
miau miau: meow meow —> meow
kikirikiiii: keekeereekee —> cock-a-doodle-doo
pio pio: peeoh-peeoh —> tweet (bird)
huik huik: week-week (kinda) —> oink oink
bee: baeh (like stuttering) —> baa (sheep sound)
muu: moo —> moo

I think those are the more commonly used. Also, like in Japan, in my country (and in all spanish-speaking countries, I believe), little kids use ‘guau guau’ as a noun to designate dogs, e.g. ‘Look mommy, there’s a ‘guau guau’ over there’.

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ザック says:

20の言葉だったらおもしろくなると思います。ブログをちゃんとわかってますけどわからない擬音語、擬態語が多いですからこのレソンも使えると思ってました。これは初心者のレベルと言ったほうがいいね。

初心者でも10の言葉以前は無駄だと思います

でも僕は文句言わない方がいい。新しい口の表現のレソンがすごいですからね。

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George says:

こんにちは

このレッソンはすごく面白かったんです。もっと擬態語と擬音語を勉強したいですね。

自分の意見だけど、とくにうれしい時と悲しい時と何が言ったらいい知りたいですね。擬態語を覚えておくともっと微妙な日本語を話せるようになると思います。先生たちに宜しくお願いします。

(皆、頑張ってね。日本語がすごい上手だったら日本語で文句を書いてください。例としていい勉強になるかもしれない。 :lol:

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Gabe says:

In french:

dogs: ouah ouah
cats: miaou
ducks: coin coin
frogs: coa coa
sheep: bêêê
Pigs: groin groin
roosters: cocorico
Horses: hiiiiii
cows: meuh

Gabe! :grin:

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タネ says:

Thanks to Daro-san and Gabe for those amusing sounds in Spanish and French! I always enjoy listening to what other languages seem to think animals say, and it is pretty amazing how similar many of the sounds are!

I gotta say, I never got the English “bow=wow”. Woof woof, yes. ワンワンyes.
Also the Japanese ヒヒーンfor “neigh” sounds way more like a horse to me.
IMHO.

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Jason says:

There’s a few onomatopoeias that is used in the Chinese language (mandarin and cantonese):

shi shi (peeing for little kids)
tong tong chiang (drum beats)
ji ji zha zha (birds chirping)
ji zha (talkative/talks too much in a negative sense)
wang wang ( dogs barking)
miao miao (cats purring)

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Kertu says:

こんばんは!

Its my first time to leave a comment so I would like to start off with a big thank you for the series.
I tend to be lazy’ish student but I really want to learn Japanese so whenever I do something that requires less thinking I have Japanesepod101 up and running in the background

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Jenny says:

I was in tears from laughing when I heard Peter do a literal translation, “There’s a bark-bark, over there.” I was expecting him to say doggy. Maybe I’m the only one who gets some of Peter’s jokes. :mrgreen:

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Shikamaru Nara says:

Does anybody know how to say racoon in japanese?! I’ve been looking it up forever, but no one can say it :sad: I cant say the name of my favorite animal in my faorite langue. Can someone help me out here?

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Doug says:

Are you referring to actual racoons, or racoon-dogs (tanuki)? The tanuki, in Japanese folklore, can drum on the their tummies, hence the famous Shojoji song (something I used to sing to my little girl a lot, despite not being a native speaker). The drum noise is like pom-pitty-pom-pitty-pom-pom-pom or something like that.

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mayumi says:

Doug-san,
You can sing “shojoji song”!! Sugoi! :kokoro:
We say “pon poko pon” for the sound that racoon-dogs make drumming on their tummies. :wink:

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Sivasakthivel says:

みんなさん
  SIVA です。 たみるごひと です

私の くにで たくさん Onomatopoeia  が 有ります。  おなじ でしょ。

Rooster  Kokorako
Cat   MeowMeow
Dog  LolLol
Goat  Maeii Maeii
Parrot keekee
Fox Wooooooo
Cow   maaamaaa
むかし にほんご たみるご から うまれましたと にほんごの けんきょうしゃ いいます。 わたしも おなじ いけん です。

よろしく
Siva

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Naomi says:

Sivasakthivelーsan
ああ!聞いたことあります。大野晋さんという教授の本が有名ですね。
Yeah. I’ve heard about it. The book written by Professor Susumu Oono is famous in Japan. :wink:

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Sivasakthivel says:

Naomi-sensei
Happy to get a comment from you .
I wanted to reply in detail for your comment. But I could not allocate time for this. Sorry about that.
I am not the language expert. And I also dont know Japanese well. I have found some similarities till now I have learned.
1. In Japanese, they say この くすり を ききました 。  We also have similar to that. In english , I think we dont say *It heard for that medicine”. Please correct me if i am wrong.
2. In Japanese, they say  おいしえて もらいました  おいしえて あげました おいしえて くれました。  I think in english, we dont say I gave taught Japanese or I got taught Japanese. This could be in diferent form. But We have simlar grammar structure as Japanese.
3. In Japanese we say  読んだ 本 、 のんだ みず 、 たべた りょうり
 Interestingly we also have similar structure and in our language also the verb with ends sound ‘a’ as  飲んだ たべた よんだ
4. して みたい 。 In  English we dont say I am going to do and see. May we will say I am going to try . or I am going to see . We may not combine both  みる する 。 
But we have similar strucure too.

I dont see any similarlity in writinng system. I am poor at Japanese writing. May be this is because of I hear Japanese lesssons from Jpod in audio only. I dont read the lesson notes. This could be the reason too.

With my knowledge, I can say both have lot of similarity. But I will not say this is born from that or that is born from this . Only history or language experts can say that

よろしく
Siva

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Sivasakthivel says:

Naomi-sensei
Happy to get a comment from you .
I wanted to reply in detail for your comment. But I could not allocate time for this. Sorry about that.
I am not the language expert. And I also dont know Japanese well. I have found some similarities till now I have learned.
1. In Japanese, they say この くすり を ききました 。  We also have similar to that. In english , I think we dont say *It heard for that medicine”. Please correct me if i am wrong.
2. In Japanese, they say  おいしえて もらいました  おいしえて あげました おいしえて くれました。  I think in english, we dont say I gave taught Japanese or I got taught Japanese. This could be in diferent form. But We have simlar grammar structure as Japanese.
3. In Japanese we say  読んだ 本 、 のんだ みず 、 たべた りょうり
 Interestingly we also have similar structure and in our language also the verb with ends sound ‘a’ as  飲んだ たべた よんだ
4. して みたい 。 In  English we dont say I am going to do and see. May we will say I am going to try . or I am going to see . We may not combine both  みる する 。 
But we have similar strucure too.

I dont see any similarlity in writinng system. I am poor at Japanese writing. May be this is because of I hear Japanese lesssons from Jpod in audio only. I dont read the lesson notes. This could be the reason too.

With my knowledge, I can say both have lot of similarity. But I will not say this is born from that or that is born from this . Only history or language experts can say that

I like your lessons. Thank you very much.

よろしく
Siva

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Naomi says:

Sivasakthivel -san
Thank you so much for the detailed information. It sounds really interesting!!
Maybe I should grab one of the books written about it. :grin:

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Krystian says:

I just wanted to say that in Polish, the sound of a dog barking is “hau hau” (sounds similar to the English “how how”), and little kids (up to, say, 3 years of age), do sometimes use that onomatopoeia instead of the word for “dog”, just like in Japanese. :) But I think this is mostly due to the fact that their parents point to dogs and say “Hey, look, there’s a “hau hau” over there”, because the parents think it’s a cute thing to say. So children just pick it up, believing it’s the word people actually use for dogs ;)

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Jessi says:

Krystianさん,
That’s so cute! It’s just like in Japanese :mrgreen:

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Kaven says:

Sakura-san sounds cute indeed! i’m learning the onomatopoeia not so much because i will use them a lot but because i want to understand as much japanese as possible.

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ReishiChan says:

I agree with Jenny :mrgreen: The ‘Bark Bark’ part was hilarious. :lol:

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Inuzuka says:

It is interesting, how different the japanese imitate animal sounds. Here some examples in German:

Dogs = wau wau / Wuff wuff
German small children also say “Wauwau” to dogs.

Cats = miau miau

Goats = määäh määäh (and we stutter during saying it) :wink:
Don´t ask me to write this correctly :oops:

Pigs = oink oink

Cows = muh muh

Frogs = quaak quaak

Cocks = kickerikii

Birds = tschirp tschirp

Cuckoo = kuckuck kuckuck

Chicken = gak gak

Bees = summ summ

Since I saw “Howl´s moving castle” (Miyazaki, Studio Ghibli), I love ワンちゃん (German: “Wau-chen”) for Dogs :smile:

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Ivonne C. Goodman says:

I told a dear friend on Friday, Ane Dabisu san, anata amai desu ne. Kyou watashi wa karado o utaturo desu. Arigato Gosaimasu. (thats Japanese for Dear friend, your so sweet. I got your card today. Thank you so much!!) Just now I told a friend, Anata Shiwase ne (she just had a baby so I said “you must be very happy now!”)! Did I say any of these phrase right? I know it doesn’t have anything to do with this lesson but I just want to know.

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Motoko says:

Ivonne-san,
Some advice here;
You don’t have to use “anata” as “you” in Japanese and “sweet” would be “suteki” or “kawaii” because “amai” is for “sweet candy.”
We use “uketorimasu” as “to get/receive,” or say “kaado ga kimashita” “Your card has come to me.”
“Very happy” is said “totemo shiawase” in Japanese.
It’s good to practice writing! I hope this helps :grin:

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Zeldaria Vaamidian says:

I found the lyrics to that cat meme!
NYANYANAYANYANYANYANYANYANYANYANYANYANYANYANYANYANYANYANYANYANYANYANYANYANMYANYANYANYANYANAYANYANYANYANYANYANYANYANYANYANYANYANYANYANYANYANYANYANYANYANYANYANMYANYANYANYANYANAYANYANYANYANYANYANYANYANYANYANYANYANYANYANYANYANYANYANYANYANYANYANMYANYANYANYANYANAYANYANYANYANYANYANYANYANYANYANYANYANYANYANYANYANYANYANYANYANYANYANMYANYANYA…

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