Reflections of a Wandering Miguk

2.21.2006

Even Animals Speak Different Languages

Because of my job and my experiences here I find that I learn new things everyday. Some of them are small and seemingly insignificant, like learning a new swear word in Korean. Others are more important and character building like learning acceptance, patience and how to cook entire meals with nothing more than a two burner gas range. Without a doubt the most important thing I have learned since I have been here however, is that even animals speak different languages.
I first learned this fact after blatantly making an ass of myself in front of an entire class of five year olds. It was my first day of solo teaching and I was thrown into the classroom with nothing more than a whiteboard marker, an eraser and a couple of crayons. Being the animated, adaptable super teacher that I delude myself into thinking that I am, I set to work drawing pictures of various animals. I had the students repeat the name of the animal and then asked them what sound each animal made. Since they didn't understand me I decided that I would go first and have them follow suit. "This is a cow. C-c cow. A cow goes moo." Here I did my best to imitate the exact sound of a cow so that it was as realistic as possible so that the kids wouldn't be confused. All of this was to no avail of course since I looked back on a bunch of blinking faces and a few on the verge of tears.
Anyway, a little confused myself, I took my queries to my smartest class of seven year olds. I asked them what sounds various animals make and the responses I got were very surprising. They wrote down the phonetic spelling of the sounds animals make in Korean. Here are my findings.
A frog in English goes ribbit, in Korean it goes kegule kegule. A cat makes a meow in English but a neaung in Korean. A bird generally goes cheep cheep in English but jit jit in Korean and as odd as it is to me, a dog doesn't go woof woof as it does in English but mong mong in Korean.
Who knew that the invented terms we made for the sounds that animals make don't cross international borders? Weird. What sounds to animals make in other languages?

2 Comments:

At 2:24 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

You nincompoop:
Grenouille: "coa-coa"
Chat: "miaou"
Oiseau: "cuicui"
Chien: "ouah ouah"

You don't even really know any French at all do you?

Go to this link, click on "enter here" then click on the animal shapes around the edges of the pop-up window to hear sounds in a bunch of different languages:
http://www.flat33.com/bzzzpeek/

I guess that should pretty much blow your mind.

love,
b

 
At 8:15 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

The most important question is what sound does a snakey make? How do you spell that in Korean, French OR English?

D

 

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