Onomatopoeia. Definition from Webster's Dictionary. 1. Using words that imitate the sound they denote.[Wordnet] 2. The formation of words in imitation of sounds; a figure of speech in which the sound of a word is imitative of the sound of the thing which the word represents; as, the buzz of bees; the hiss of a goose; the crackle of fire. Some words suit themselves to Onomatopoeia. Can you find any interesting examples of variations in other languages?
I can provide several examples from Hebrew. בקבוק /bak'buk/ - a bottle (akin to the English word "gurgle" resembling the sound of a liquid being poured out of bottle) רישרוש /riʃ'ruʃ/ - rustle (resembling the sound of rustling leaves or cloth) פקק - /'pkak/ - cork (resembles the sound of a cork being forcefully pulled out of a bottle) There are many more, I'll post them later.
Is that pronounced Riss-russ? Good one. There are some great words in Yiddish that have passed into English. I like Schlemiel for a fool. Anyone who wants to search for words can use a translator program eg http://translate.google.com/# English: Meow, also spelt Miaow French: Miaou German: Miau Leopold Bloom's cat in Joyce's Ullyses says "Mkgnao!" and "Mrkgnao!" to make the noise. When Turkish people call a cat, they say Pisi Pisi In Finnish, they say Kiss Kiss In German they say Miez Miez In Danish they say Mis Mis, and Mis is another word for a cat, as is Puss in English.
Japanese love these sorts of words. JuJu JuJu JuJu = sizzling noise of meat in a pan. But they have other interesting "noises" as well Shabou Shabou = the "swishing" of cooking meat through a hot pot using chop sticks (kind of fun at dinner time... makes you hungry hearing it....) How about the "sound" of an intense stare? Jiro Jiro ...or the "throbbing" of a heart? Doki Doki Doki Doki ...
The Spud Empress (out and out genius) and the genius son who was about eleven at the time were prattling on about literary shit and they turned to onomatopaeia, I piped up with ".. err... like - on a matter pertainin' to patatoes, I've got a plate 'o potaters, mashed pertaters..." the bastards cut me off,..(simultaneously).."Noooo! that's alliteration ya dickhead!!", or some such shit. They can fuck 'emselves, my family. Slurp!, verb, adjective, favourite pastime and onomatofuckingpaeic! Put down ya glasses.
Have any of your family ever likened you to Homer Simpson, Spud? Try this on them: Poisson sans boisson--c'est poison! Say it with a self satisfied smirk on your dial.
Not sure if this thread is going how I intended, but I like the results so far. Amusing sounding words are acceptable. Trouble with onomatopoeia is that the words often sound the same in many languages. Punch for example. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Any onomato- or amusing Australian words spud? There must be loads in the Tantawangalo area, with all the Hippies and Aborigines, and Fijian-Anglo-Antipodeans and their progeny. Sam, there must be loads of amusing Indian words. I wonder why we find some words funny. Boink, for example.
No, it's "rish-roosh." Those are IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) symbols. u is the cardinal U of most languages, not the "short U" of American English "up." And ʃ is the SH phoneme. The Wikipedia article shows the entire set of symbols with their phonetic values. It was originally spelled "Schlemihl" and was coined by A. von Chamisso in his German-language story "The Wonderful World of Peter Schlemihl." Figuring out how he came up with the name is about like trying to do an etymology on the made-up words in a Doctor Seuss story. (Look up his now-popular word "nerd" for a particularly silly afternoon of linguistic detective work.) Most sources suggest that it's from the Hebrew name Shelumiel, a biblical figure who qualified as the archetypal loser by being killed while committing adultery. But the OED says it's simply the unremarkable Hebrew phrase shleh miel, "ineffective." In many cases it's because they present combinations of phonemes that do not occur in our language, and so strike our ears as unusual. The only other English word that ends in the combination OINK is "oink" itself, the onomatopoeic transcription of the grunt of a pig. Anything to do with pigs is automatically funny.Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! We laugh at words that start with SH- followed by any consonant except R, because those combinations do not begin English words. That's German phonetics, and Yiddish is descended from a dialect of Medieval German. This is why so many German-Jewish surnames and Yiddish words (schtoop, schlong) are automatically funny to our ears. In fact, this is why we write those Yiddish words with SCH- instead of SH-. Oddly, there are no standard rules for transliterating Yiddish into the Roman alphabet. About the only guideline is: Just try to make it NOT look like German. This is why we write, for example, Yiddish instead of Jüdisch. But the one exception is that we always start words with SCH- instead of SH-, e.g., schmaltz for "fat, grease," even though shmaltz would be as un-German as possible, since the German word is spelled schmalz. SCH just looks funny!
Accepted for the OED maybe, but you have to careful when you boink* your girlfriend that you're not too close to the wall, otherwise you'll get a doink on the head. * Or bonk. IIRC boink was used as "bonk" in the TV series Only Fools & Horses. It's also used to emulate a "springing" sound - "boink, boink, boink" went the slinky, down the stairs. http://www.thefreedictionary.com/boink Doink can have a similar meaning, but it also doubles as a (relatively painless) blow - usually to the head.
Since the World cup, we are all familiar with the word Vuvuzela, a two foot long plastic device for ruining football matches. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! You buy a season ticket cheaply, then you find yourself in the Vuvuzela section