{"id":709,"date":"2013-05-22T14:10:35","date_gmt":"2013-05-22T05:10:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.transenzjapan.com\/blog\/?p=709"},"modified":"2020-12-20T09:32:50","modified_gmt":"2020-12-20T00:32:50","slug":"japanese-onomatopoeia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transenzjapan.com\/blog\/japanese-onomatopoeia\/","title":{"rendered":"Onomatopoeia in Japanese"},"content":{"rendered":"<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC \"-\/\/W3C\/\/DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional\/\/EN\" \"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/TR\/REC-html40\/loose.dtd\">\n<html><body><p><script async src=\"https:\/\/pagead2.googlesyndication.com\/pagead\/js\/adsbygoogle.js\"><\/script><!-- DullGrayLinkAd --><ins class=\"adsbygoogle\" style=\"display:block\" data-ad-client=\"ca-pub-5833612346624328\" data-ad-slot=\"1050832894\" data-ad-format=\"link\" data-full-width-responsive=\"true\"><\/ins><script>(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});<\/script><\/p>\n<p>When I started studying Japanese, I never paid much attention to the language&rsquo;s onomatopoeia, but <a href=\"http:\/\/www.transenzjapan.com\/blog\/japanese-childrens-books\/\">reading children&rsquo;s books in Japanese<\/a> has taught me that there is a spelling for everything sound, and a sound for everything.<\/p>\n<h1>This is the Sound a Pancake Makes<\/h1>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>One of Nina&rsquo;s favorite books, another from the Koguma-chan series that I mentioned in the article linked above, is &ldquo;Shirokuma-chan no Hottokeeki&rdquo; (&ldquo;Shirokuma-chan Makes Pancakes.&rdquo;) One evening, I decided I would translate each page on the fly as I read it to her. This went pretty well through the pages where the white bear Shirokuma-chan is getting her ingredients ready and mixing the batter. But then I came to the cooking page, which has 12 panels showing the pancakes gradually getting closer to done. Most of those panels were onomatopoeia. How many sounds can a pancake make, anyway?<\/p>\n<table>\n<tr>\n<th>Japanese sound<\/th>\n<th>What it represents<\/th>\n<th>English guess<\/th>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Potaan<\/td>\n<td>Batter oozing from the ladle into the pan<\/td>\n<td>Ploomp<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Dorodoro<\/td>\n<td>Batter spreading across the pan<\/td>\n<td>Soosh soosh<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Pichipichi<\/td>\n<td>Sizzling of butter around the edges<\/td>\n<td>Sizzle<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Putsuputsu<\/td>\n<td>Air bubbles percolating up through the batter<\/td>\n<td>Pufhp Pufhp<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Shu&rsquo;<\/td>\n<td>Flipping the pancake<\/td>\n<td>Fwip<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Petan<\/td>\n<td>Pancake landing in pan again<\/td>\n<td>Splat<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Fukufuku<\/td>\n<td>Batter rising<\/td>\n<td>Foo Foo<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Kunkun<\/td>\n<td>Same as fukufuku<\/td>\n<td>More Foo Foo<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Poi&rsquo;<\/td>\n<td>Tossing finished pancake out of pan<\/td>\n<td>Shwip<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<p>Nine, apparently. Seriously, though, I think I&rsquo;ve only ever heard the &ldquo;pichipichi&rdquo; and &ldquo;putsuputsu&rdquo; sounds in real life- and I make pancakes every weekend- but there are some Japanese onomatopoeia that I can easily get behind, like:<\/p>\n<h1>Animal Sounds<\/h1>\n<p>Although I think English gets a lot of animal sounds right, I hadn&rsquo;t realized until recently just how many lacked any sort of spelling. Sure, you can tell me that a lion roars, or an elephant trumpets, but how would you spell the noise? In Japanese, there&rsquo;s a spelling for the sound: Gawoo for the lion and Pawoon for the elephant. I was a little skeptical at first, but if you read those while you listen to a recording, it all makes sense. According to Nina&rsquo;s picture books, there are also sounds for animals&rsquo; movement: Pyonpyon for a hopping rabbit and Nyoronyoronyoro for a slithering snake. (I found it interesting that the snake in the book was not associated with anything resembling a hissing sound).<\/p>\n<p>Ok, sure, but animal sounds are easy. If I really wanted to, I could ditch the &ldquo;neigh&rdquo; spelling, which bears no resemblance to the noise made by any horse I&rsquo;ve ever seen, and replace it with something more accurate, like Ngeeaghehehehghghpbthh (good luck with that one, spell check). But what about something more difficult. Like:<\/p>\n<h1>Vegetable Sounds and Other Foods<\/h1>\n<p>Yes, there are Japanese onomatopoeia for vegetables, ranging from the understandable to the absurd. On the comprehensible side of the spectrum, there&rsquo;s Hyoroori for cucumber (that&rsquo;s Japanese cucumber, thank you, not those horrid things you find in American markets). Also, cucumbers have their own chewing onomatopoeia: Poripori. Potatoes sound like &ldquo;Gorogoro,&rdquo; the sound of rolling objects. (Not to be confused with &ldquo;Guruguru,&rdquo; a rumbling stomach, which is a problem solved by potatoes.)<\/p>\n<p>One of Nina&rsquo;s favorite songs from the TV show &ldquo;Inai Inai Ba&rdquo; (Peekaboo) is called &ldquo;Pekkopeko! Pikkopiko!&rdquo; Pekkopeko means hungry (with the double k for emphasis) and Pikkopiko is the sound that the Guutan&rsquo;s food radar makes. (I want a food radar!) The song follows Guutan as he homes in on food based on the characteristic noise of eating it. The first fifty times I heard the song, I thought it was kinda goofy, but another hundred times later and the lyrics seem to make perfect sense. Here&rsquo;s what he hunts down:<\/p>\n<table>\n<tr>\n<th>Noise<\/th>\n<th>Food<\/th>\n<th>Note<\/th>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Fuufuu Churuchuru<\/td>\n<td>Udon<\/td>\n<td>Blowing on it then chewing<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Paripari Mogumogu<\/td>\n<td>Onigiri<br> (rice ball)<\/td>\n<td>Mogumogu is one of the most common chewing noises<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Mukimuki Pakkun<\/td>\n<td>Banana<\/td>\n<td>Pakkun is also the name of the flowers in Mario that try to eat you<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Pakkin Kori&rsquo;kori&rsquo;<\/td>\n<td>Cucumber<\/td>\n<td>&nbsp;<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Kuchukuchu Nebaneba<\/td>\n<td>Natto<br>(Fermented soybeans)<\/td>\n<td>Kuchukuchu is also used for brushing teeth<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Gashigashi Tsubutsubu<\/td>\n<td>Corn-on-the-Cob<\/td>\n<td>&nbsp;<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Zakkuri Haru&rsquo;haru&rsquo;<\/td>\n<td>Hamburg Steak<\/td>\n<td>&nbsp;<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Purupuru Tsururun<\/td>\n<td>Pudding<\/td>\n<td>&nbsp;<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<p>I promise, if you listen to the song enough times, you actually start to hear these sounds when you eat&hellip;<\/p>\n<h1>Keeping Track of it All<\/h1>\n<p>To be honest, I don&rsquo;t. I find all of it fascinating, but when you get so many blasted at you at once through children&rsquo;s books and songs, especially songs sung in cartoon character-type voices, it&rsquo;s impossible to catch them all, much less remember them. When the day comes that I can pick up each of these onomatopoeia the first time, and understand what they mean, I will consider myself a true master of the language. In the mean time, I&rsquo;ll just have to keep asking Sawa to explain!<\/p>\n<p>If you want to stay up to date on our activities at TranSenz and ramblings about life as an international family, we encourage you to follow us on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/TranSenz\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Facebook<\/a> for the latest updates on our activities and new articles!<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When I started studying Japanese, I never paid much attention to the language&rsquo;s onomatopoeia, but reading children&rsquo;s books in Japanese has taught me that there is a spelling for everything sound, and a sound for everything. This is the Sound a Pancake Makes<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,3,28],"tags":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transenzjapan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/709"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transenzjapan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transenzjapan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transenzjapan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transenzjapan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=709"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/www.transenzjapan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/709\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":168760,"href":"https:\/\/www.transenzjapan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/709\/revisions\/168760"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transenzjapan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=709"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transenzjapan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=709"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transenzjapan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=709"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}