Why do Taiwanese dogs go "Wong Wong"?

Can’t we just all use this device and understand each-other? A recipe for world-peace?

Taiwan dogs cannot pronounce the ‘r’. What they are really saying is, “wrong wrong. This sweater ensemble is all wrong. You’ve got pastels mixed with loud reds and yellows. Where is you sense of fashion? wong wong wong. All wong.”

actually, a discussion in chinese class recently revealed that when a human emulates a dog’s bark (as I often like to do) they say “woh”, “woh” (that’s the way I heard it anyway) here instead of “woof”, “woof”. Someone needs to tell the dogs to learn BPMF before barking.

Thinking about it. Do dogs actually “woof”?.. or"wong" or"woh" or whatever?

And it comes with a personal recommendation from Oprah Winfrey.

:wanker:

But the only reason - the only reason - that you or I or any other English speaker thinks dogs go “woof” is because that’s what we are accustomed to. If we’d grown up thinking “wang” was the word for the noise a dog makes, we’d not see any problem with it, and would probably think “woof” sounded stupid.

Then there’s another point - are you sure ‘wang’ in Chinese equates to ‘woof’ in English? Are you sure it’s not ‘bark’, ‘yap’, or any of those others?

When a Taiwanese opens the car door at speed and hits the annoying dog it makes a “pong” noise and the dog goes “wong”

Obviously if a westerner does this you get a “bang” and “woof” noise.

Sorry in advance to Stray Dog.

Uh, becuse they are onomtopoeic maybe.

Here a list of how bogs bark in other languages:
georgetown.edu/faculty/ballc … s/dog.html

Afrikaans: woef 
Albanian: ham ham / hum hum 
Arabic (Algeria): haw haw 
Bengali: ghaue-ghaue 
Catalan: bup, bup 
Chinese (Mandarin): wang wang 
Croatian: vau-vau 
Danish: vov 
Dutch: woef 
English: bow wow, arf, woof, ruff ruff 
English (Old English): Hund byrc

Anyone know what Chinese roosters say? Coz I sure don’t understand why anyone would think a rooster says “cock-a-doodle doo.” And for that matter, do birds really say “tweet” and pigs say “oink”? Couldn’t we have come up with something better?

I hereby move that we create our own “pure” lexicon of animal sounds to overcome the inherent silliness of both English and Chinese.

[quote=“Harvey Ballwanger”]Anyone know what Chinese roosters say? Coz I sure don’t understand why anyone would think a rooster says “cock-a-doodle doo.”[/quote]Have you ever heard one crowing in the morning ? They do say that (I seem to remember they do, there aren’t many in Taipei to refresh my memory). According to the site above they say “Gou gou”

In the hills here, my neighbors have a rooster. Damn thing crows all day long. Just doesn’t sound like “cock-a-doodle-doo” to me - more like “arr-aroo-aroooooooooooo,” sometimes with a little choking noise at the end.

One of my other neighbors keeps a dog in the garage, and with the sharp tinny echo I swear to god it does sound like “wang wang.” Maybe the onomatopoeia is in the ear of the beholder.

chinese roosters go gou3 gou1 gou1 gou1

咕…咕…咕…咕…

like the pitch the rooster makes.

咕 (gou) is the Chinese equivalent of “cluck” rather than a rooster crow.

The point is Chinese home dogs have traditionally been these small lap rats, which have a higher pitch bark than the typical larger western dog.

[quote=“lupillus”]Chinese roosters go gou3 gou1 gou1 gou1
like the pitch the rooster makes.[/quote]

Hmm, a clucking noise or “cock-a-doodle-doo” - not sure which is further from the actual sound. As for the English, I’m still not able to discern final -k or -l consonants in a rooster’s crow, though I’m pretty sure I hear an “oo” or “oh.” It all makes me wonder to what degree the English is attributable to a “cock” saying its own name in its sound - no other animal I can think of does that.

Your point about pitch makes for an interesting possibility. Might a tonal language be better at capturing onomotopeic sounds? Or does intonation render the point moot? I mean, a rooster’s pitch at least would seem to be better represented by a falsetto first tone, but then could Chinese really capture the variability of a cow’s English moo, perhaps written tonally as moo3-2-1-1-1-4?

Chinese roosters call in both gu gu gu gu and ou ou ou ou.

as in:

“先是有一隻公雞啼叫一聲:「咕──咕──咕──」聲音遠遠的傳過來。”

and

“第二天,朦朧中我聽見了久違了的雞鳴,喔-喔-喔―――喔-喔―喔―――”

either sound, when pronouced, the reader will change tones, probably 3-1-1-1.

The dashes indicate that it is a prolonged sound, unlike the cluck of a hen, which is 咕咕.

The tones I’m writing down are probably wrong, I think, but the sounds are made to imitate the rooster’s call.

Have you ever asked your students (if you’ve taught) what sound a mosquito makes? I did once when I was trying to correct Zz pronunciation problems. The reply:

a nasal “nggggggg”.

I always thought mosquitoes (and bees) zzzzzzzzzz’ed (as in buzzzzzz).

The only reason to that Taiwanese/Chinese dogs go 'wang" is that you only have a limited number of consonant finals in mandarin.

You don’t have -f, but only

  • m
  • n
  • ng

Ua (when an initial written as wa) only goes with the - ng ending.

Maybe Chinese dogs say, “Wong, wong,” because it’s more polite than, “hey dude, your arse stinks so good!”

I am reposting this because I think I may have been partially responsible for this astute reply being ignored at the outset of this otherwise pretty silly discusion. Of course Mr He makes pretty much the same point. What it boils down to is that Chinese dogs say wong wong because the character system requires them to… :loco: