And last but not least… we have the turtle… what’s the sound of the turtle? The turtle has no sound!
In today’s article we are going to cover a topic that is not related to grammar, that many don’t know, but it’s still quite interesting, namely: verbs to indicate the sounds of animals, at least the most famous ones. Let’s get it started!
Alright, we’re done for today, but before you go, write us what your favorite animals and sounds are. Besides as you can read, there are several expressions involving animals, but if you want to learn new ones, then you can watch our video about Italian sayings!
How dogs bark in Western Europe
First stop: French and Spanish. En français, you have a couple of different options for how to describe dog-speak. You can say ouaf ouaf, ouah ouah, or wouf wouf. As you can see, we’re still in “woof”-ish territory here. Spanish, though, is another story; in Spain and other Spanish-speaking countries, dogs say guau guau! (Take a listen here; the “g” is muted so it sounds a bit like “wow wow.”) Also in Spain (northeastern Spain, to be exact), as well as Andorra, you’ll find speakers of the Catalan language, where dogs say bup bup.
Moving east, you’ll find dogs saying waf waf and woef woef in the Netherlands; wau wau, waff waff, and wuff wuff in Germany; and vuf vuf in Denmark. All the way down in geography’s most famous boot, Italy, dog-speak is represented as bau bau. For some more language trivia, do you know about these unique words in English that don’t have foreign equivalents?
How do you write the sounds of a dog?
“Blaff,” “baff,” “buff,” “nyaff,” “yaff,” “yaffle,” and even “waffle” have all been used to describe barks, not to mention “woof”-the valedictorian of dog words (except for maybe “bow-wow,” first found in the 1500s and sometimes spelled “bowgh-wawgh,” “bough-wough,” and “baw-waw”).