‘To Woof or Not to Woof’ 

Alice Watson (Y9) explores how animal sounds are written and interpreted differently in English, French and Spanish 

In English, we have certain written sounds that we use to associate with the sounds that our animals, both domestic and wild. Even though the sound each animal makes doesn’t change depending on the country it’s in, surprisingly, the sound each animal makes is written differently in each language!

In England, we say that the sound a dog makes is ‘Woof’ or ‘Ruff’ and the sound a cat makes as ‘Miaow’ or ‘Purr’ both of which are derived from impersonating their sound using onomatopoeia. But because of the difference in pronunciation, diphthongs, and alphabet, animal sounds are spelt differently in other languages.

Below is a table of the different animal sounds in English, French and Spanish. which language do you think has the most accurate onomatopoeia?

	English	French	Spanish
Dog/chien/perro	‘woof’	‘ouaf’	‘guau guau’
Cat/chat/gato	‘miaow’ and ‘purr’	‘miaou’ and ‘ronron’	‘miau’
Chicken/poulet/pollo	‘cluck ‘cluck’	‘cot cot’	‘clo clo’
Pig/couchon/cerdo	‘oink’	‘groin grouin’	‘oinc oinc’
Cow/vache/vaca	‘moo’	‘meuh’	‘mu’
Donkey/âne/burro	‘hee haw’	‘hi han’	‘hiaaa hiaaa’
Sheep/mouton/oveja	‘baah’	‘bee beeh’	‘beee’
Rooster/coq/gallo	‘cock-a-doodle-doo’	‘cocorico’	‘Quiquiriquí’
Horse/cheval/caballo	‘neigh’	‘hiii’	‘hiii’