An onomatopoeia is a term that recreates the sound of something.
Onomatopoeia is a word that comes from the late Latin onomatopoeia , although its origin dates back to a Greek word. It is the imitation or recreation of the sound of something in the term that is used to mean it . It can also refer to visual phenomena .
For example: “His vehicle was traveling in a zigzag pattern until it collided with a tree.” In this case, the onomatopoeia “zigzag” refers to an oscillating walk that is perceived with the sense of sight.
The word click , also accepted in Spanish written without the letter "k", is another example of onomatopoeia, and its use is very common today. The click that is heard when pressing the mouse button (or mouse) has been transformed into a word that refers to said action.
Japanese is probably the language with the greatest number of onomatopoeias. This language includes onomatopoeia in everyday speech, something that is not very common in other countries in the world.
Animal onomatopoeias
Onomatopoeias are also words or expressions that imitate the sound made by animals , and these are used by young children from many and very diverse cultures, although they are also very common in literature .
“Wow” (dog), “meow” (cat), “peep” (bird), “ quack” (duck), “ kikiriki” (rooster), “moo” (cow) and “oink” (pig) are some of the most popular onomatopoeias. It is interesting to note that each language has its own onomatopoeia and often the differences are considerable, despite the fact that these terms arise from the imitation of the same sounds.
"Wow", “peep” y “kikiriki” del castellano se transforman en “woof”, “tweet” y “cock-a-doodle-doo” en el idioma inglés.
The onomatopoeia "boom" refers to an explosion.
Linguistic diversity
The differences between the onomatopoeia of each language are a topic that does not interest many people, since it is mainly noticed by those who study a foreign language, but they hide a phenomenon worthy of being discussed in depth.
First of all, it is important to highlight that not all languages have the same sounds . For example, our pronunciation of the letter "r" is very different from what it receives in English or Japanese; In the latter case, the distance is even greater, given that other alphabets are used in Japan and do not have a specific character for the "r" , but rather combine it with a series of vowels, also different from ours.
Having accepted and understood the sound diversity that exists in the world, it is understandable that not all of us have been able to represent the sounds of nature in the same way. But this leads us to ask ourselves something that, perhaps, also goes unnoticed: is our hearing capacity limited by the characteristics of our language? That is to say, does an Irishman hear the same as a Spaniard? The answer, again, requires a certain theoretical background.
Our brain has the ability (and perhaps, the need) to fill in the blanks with information generated by itself; In other words, it could be understood as a function that tries to make us feel at ease, even when we don't know what is happening around us. If we listen to a conversation in a language that we do not understand for a few minutes, it is likely that we will begin to perceive certain words in our language, or even some onomatopoeia; The brain wants to understand .
For this reason, if a person who cannot pronounce the syllable "cro" hears the croaking of a frog, it is expected that he will not perceive it as someone who speaks Spanish either. Your brain will look for the closest option, making use of the sounds available in the language(s) you know, and this will be convincing to the individual.
In summary, our first linguistic structure arms us with tools to understand and communicate what we see, hear and feel , but what makes sense in our mind may be absurd or non-existent in another's.