Onomatopoeia is the formation of a word that imitates the sounds associated with the objects or actions they refer to. It is commonly used to mimic animal noises. Although each language imitates sounds occurring in nature, which are presumably the same everywhere in the world, each language interprets these sounds in accordance with its own sound system and culture.
So, just how do animals in Japan sound? Extend your vocabulary with the following list of Japanese animal sound-based phrases.
| Animal | English | Japanese |
| Bear | Grrr | グオー (guo—) |
| Bee | Buzz | ブーンブーン (bu—n bu—n) |
| Bird | Tweet | ピチュピチュ (pichu pichu) |
| Cat | Meow | ニャーニャー (nya— nya—) |
| Cow | Moo | モーモー (mo— mo—) |
| Dog | Woof | ワンワン (wan wan) |
| Duck | Quack | ガーガー (ga— ga—) |
| Frog | Croak | ケロケロ (kero kero) |
| Goat | Naa | メーメー (me— me—) |
| Horse | Neigh | ヒヒーン (hi-hi—n) |
| Lion | Roar | ガオー (gao—) |
| Mouse | Squeek | チューチュー (chu— chu—) |
| Owl | Hoot | ホーホー (ho— ho—) |
| Pig | Oink | ブーブー (bu— bu—) |
| Rooster | Cock-a-doodle-doo | コケコッコー (Ko ke kokko—) |
| Sheep | Baa | メーメー (me— me—) |
A dash (‘—’) indicates vowel elongation.
City Names In Katakana is a project to list as many city names from around the world in katakana. Don’t see your city on the list? Leave a comment with a request and I will add it. This page will continually evolve over time.
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Novelist, technologist, photographer and resident of Japan, Michael Werneburg, discusses the frustrations of living with a foreign name in Japan. This guest post is an expansion of an article on his own website that details his struggles with living with a foreign name in an English-speaking country.
Katakana Blues
My surname is “Werneburg”, and the name just doesn’t work in Japanese. It originates in the forested heart of Germany where its pronunciation is obvious even if it is by no means an everyday name. But Germany’s rolling hills and rolling r’s are a long way from Japan, and it’s here that the import—like an invader species—causes some chaos.
The first problem for foreigners like me is that the Japanese language has a range of sounds that is more limited than in our European languages. Whereas English has some twenty vowels and twenty-four consonants, Japanese has only five vowel sounds and nineteen consonant sounds. Further restricting the pronunciation in Japanese is the use of a syllabary rather than an alphabet. These syllables combine a consonant and a vowel together, so that when you want to use a consonant you have to follow it with a vowel sound that fits one of the available syllables. The ‘n’ sound sometimes stands alone, but the rest must always incorporate a vowel.
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