Onomatopoeia

We use several onomatopoeic expressions in a regular chat.

But what is an onomatopoeia? Because is not just a funny word, right?

Onomatopoeia is a word that phonetically imitates or suggests the source if the sound that it describes.

Is common to find them in comics as the sound of the accion:

Even in the sound of laugh: Ha-ha.

And of course animals sounds:



















For animal sounds: 
Words like quack (duck), moo (cow), bark or woof (dog), roar (lion), meow/miaow or purr (cat), cluck (chicken) and baa (sheep) are typically used in English. Some of these words are used both as nouns and as verbs.

As: "the frog croaking" or "a dog is barking"


Anyway...

Although in the English language the term onomatopoeia means the imitation of a sound, in the Greek language the compound word onomatopoeia (ονοματοποιία) means "making or creating names"

Words like Crash and Clock are included on the english language and they are a onomatopoeic expresions. (Because the sound that is produce by)

We also found: the knock-knock of a door, the ring of a bell, the click of a computer mouse and the tic-tac of a clock, these are a good example of onomatopoeia 

Cross-cultural differences

Although a particular sound is heard similarly by people of different cultures, it is often expressed through the use of different consonant strings in different languages. For example, the "snip" of a pair of scissors is su-su in Chinese, cri-cri in Italian, riqui-riqui in Spanish, terre-terre in Portuguese, krits-krits in modern Greek and katr-katr in Hindi. Similarly, the "honk" of a car's horn is ba-ba in Chinese, tut-tut in French, pu-pu in Japanese, bbang-bbang in Korean, baert-baertin Norwegian and bim-bim in Vietnamese


Onomatopoeic effect without onomatopoeia words

Onomatopoeic effect can also be produced in a phrase or word string with the help of alliteration and consonance alone, without using any onomatopoeic words.  The most famous example is the phrase "furrow followed free" in Samuel Taylor Coleridge's Rime of the Ancient Mariner. It may be noted that the words "followed" and "free" are not onomatopoeic in themselves, but in conjunction with "forrow", they reproduce the sound of ripples following in the wake of a speeding ship.

Similarly, alliteration has been used in the line "as the surf surged up the sun swept shore...", to recreate the sound of breaking waves, in the poem "I, She and the Sea"
information take from Wikipedia.

Let's watch this video. These norwegian guys rocks with the onomatopoeia!