I once read Dragon Ball translated into English, and noticed that the author frequently inserted short bursts of onomatopoeia into moments where there would be none if it was a work that originated in English (eg. when a person stepped down onto the ground after finishing levitating). It felt totally natural and unobtrusive while reading it in Japanese, but it suddenly stood out and felt jarring in English.
I guess Japanese has a much lower threshold for when an occurrence of something warrants an onomatopoeia. Western superhero comics would only insert written onomatopoeia upon the occurrence of a fairly loud and memorable sound (Creaak! Thud! Wham!); Manga, on the other hand, sprinkles them much more liberally, even with small insignificant sounds and (famously) ambient atmospheres that would make no audible sound.
It's just part of the language. Everything has onomatopoeia. It's not just Toriyama who does it. You will find it in manga all over even stuff before his time. You'll also hear things like "jiiiiii" for people staring in anime too.
Uh, I know. I am Japanese, I have tons of manga reading experience over decades. It's just that reading the same work both in the original Japanese and translated English made the difference in threshold more obvious.
My favorite Japanese onomatopoeia is shiin (シーン), the sound of silence. Used both literally and figuratively if you're shocked into silence by something.
Interestingly, English has the latter use too, we just write it "..." and it doesn't have a pronunciation.
- Do you know where I store my dad jokes? In a dad-abase!
A stand out memory from my visit to Argentina was all the crazy bug sounds. One sounded exactly like the cartoon sound effect of an arrow being shot into a target.
So it seems like onomatopoeia means something different in Japanese...because here it seems to just be "any word said twice in a row that may or may not sound at all like the thing they're meant to mimic."
You might be right but as someone who studied Japanese and lived in Japan for a long time (15 years) at some point you (or I) grok it and it fits. You (or I) internalize the Japanese sounds of things and start to get it.
It also helps to use the Japanese pronounciations and accents. Some examples:
Pokki (pronouced Poh (rhymes with "go") then a pause, then Ki (rhymes with "me") Poh Ki, is the sound of stick breaking, which is why those chocolate sticks are called "Pocky"
fuwafuwa (shown in the article), is clearly a soft sound. Vs say "crack" (an english onomatopoeia sound).
"zarazara" (zah-rah-zah-rah) vs "sarasara" (sah-rah-sah-rah) note: you need to roll the R one roll and say the word fast. "zarazara" is rough like sandpaper, "sarasara" is smooth like a kitchen counter. The zzzzz vs the sssss feels pretty clear after so many years of practice. zzzzz (bees go buzzzz in English) is clearly a buzziers more vibrating sound than sssss (snakes go ssssss in English)
"putsu=putsu" (pronounced puts-puts), vs "pata-pata" vs "zaa-zaa" are different sounds for rain. The rain is falling "Zaa-Zaa" is much harder (imagine hard rain on a thin aluminum roof) than "pata-pata" light rain (just enough for it to make noise) or "puts-puts", a sprinkle.
I mean, that's a matter of perspective, isn't it? English words like "bang", "chirp" and "snap" are considered to be onomatopoeia, even though their pronunciation has very little objective resemblance to the sounds they refer to.
It's more a question of whether the word's sound evokes a particular feeling or impression in the listener.
Right. What sounds does a dog make? Bark? Woof? Ruf? To me the right word for a dog noise is bark. But it sounds the more like woof to me. Do dogs even bow-wow?
Onomatopoeia are commonly equated to phonomimes but can also include phenomimes and psychomimes. Phonomimes are meant to imitate an actual sound - like "bark" for a Dog (wanwan in Japanese). Most Japanese onomatopoeic expressions come in the double form (the sound repeated twice). There are of course っと and り forms of onomatopoeia but the double form is probably the most common and among the most known ones.
Phenomimes are onomatopoeia that depict something closer to an action than a sound - for example "powering up" (can't recall this one sorry) or "to be spinning around" (guruguru).
Doubled base onomatopoeia are not unique to Japanese either. Think of "bam-bam", "pop-pop", "click-click", "chirp-chirp", "oink-oink" or a bit less strictly "rattattat". I believe the technical linguistic term for this is called reduplication.
English seems to go for vowel changes for these types of phrases (click-clack, tick-tock, clip-clop, pitter-patter). Perhaps this is because English has more vowel sounds to work with?
Following this, English has some good examples for words that aren't imitating a sound. (Wishy-washy, zig-zag, tip-top).
It means the same as for other languages. The doubling is commonplace but not exclusively used for all onomatopoeia. Japanese uses doubling of words in other situations and has a special repetition character when the first part is written in kanji to simplify writing them.
My daughter will ask my wife, "Can I please have shuwa-shuwa orange juice?", meaning she wants her to add carbonated water to it. It's entertaining to watch these words used in action because there's no equivalent in English outside of the underlying meaning.
In Japanese there's a very clear distinction, because adjectives conjugate and sounds don't. Sounds also stand alone: it's possible and common to label a drink in a manga (cartoon) as "shuwa shuwa", while labeling it "fizzy" in English would be quite weird. The GP's daughter is really asking for "fizz juice", but again, that doesn't compute in English.
I've been learning Japanese for a long time as well, and I often hear this response by folks saying there's "no equivalent in Japanese" (aka the reverse).
Truth is you can communicate it, it's just communicated differently. Folks like to pretend there are mystical properties to a language, but reality isn't like that.
Fizzy wizzy juice. Fuzzy wuzzy was a bear. Buzzing bumble bee.
The difference is that it’s seen as childish in English and people stop talking this way in late elementary school, aside from limited uses (like buzzing)
Wooow, thanks so much for the reference of our Shuwa-Shuwa book.
We are a French-Japanese family and we are delighted to present you our family book project : 100 Japanese onomatopeias illustrated by 100 different artists from 35 countries.
If you're interested in a work that showcases a lot of the fun grammatical tricks present in Japanese, I highly recommend the novelized form of the Monogatari series. The animated adaptation tries to keep a lot of it in, but it really can't compare to the written work.
Wooow, thanks so much for the reference of our Shuwa-Shuwa book.
We are a French-Japanese family and we are delighted to present you our family book project : 100 Japanese onomatopeias illustrated by 100 different artists from 35 countries.
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I guess Japanese has a much lower threshold for when an occurrence of something warrants an onomatopoeia. Western superhero comics would only insert written onomatopoeia upon the occurrence of a fairly loud and memorable sound (Creaak! Thud! Wham!); Manga, on the other hand, sprinkles them much more liberally, even with small insignificant sounds and (famously) ambient atmospheres that would make no audible sound.
Interestingly, English has the latter use too, we just write it "..." and it doesn't have a pronunciation.
- Do you know where I store my dad jokes? In a dad-abase!
- ...
There’s definite animal naming from their sounds. For one species, we get: crow, corvo, karasu, Krähe, cacalotl, gaa, kkamagwi.
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It also helps to use the Japanese pronounciations and accents. Some examples:
Pokki (pronouced Poh (rhymes with "go") then a pause, then Ki (rhymes with "me") Poh Ki, is the sound of stick breaking, which is why those chocolate sticks are called "Pocky"
https://youtu.be/IQQKnwZT55o?t=76
fuwafuwa (shown in the article), is clearly a soft sound. Vs say "crack" (an english onomatopoeia sound).
"zarazara" (zah-rah-zah-rah) vs "sarasara" (sah-rah-sah-rah) note: you need to roll the R one roll and say the word fast. "zarazara" is rough like sandpaper, "sarasara" is smooth like a kitchen counter. The zzzzz vs the sssss feels pretty clear after so many years of practice. zzzzz (bees go buzzzz in English) is clearly a buzziers more vibrating sound than sssss (snakes go ssssss in English)
"putsu=putsu" (pronounced puts-puts), vs "pata-pata" vs "zaa-zaa" are different sounds for rain. The rain is falling "Zaa-Zaa" is much harder (imagine hard rain on a thin aluminum roof) than "pata-pata" light rain (just enough for it to make noise) or "puts-puts", a sprinkle.
It's more a question of whether the word's sound evokes a particular feeling or impression in the listener.
To some extent this is dependent on your spoken language and culture, but it can be surprisingly universal. See e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bouba/kiki_effect
Phenomimes are onomatopoeia that depict something closer to an action than a sound - for example "powering up" (can't recall this one sorry) or "to be spinning around" (guruguru).
Doubled base onomatopoeia are not unique to Japanese either. Think of "bam-bam", "pop-pop", "click-click", "chirp-chirp", "oink-oink" or a bit less strictly "rattattat". I believe the technical linguistic term for this is called reduplication.
Following this, English has some good examples for words that aren't imitating a sound. (Wishy-washy, zig-zag, tip-top).
Truth is you can communicate it, it's just communicated differently. Folks like to pretend there are mystical properties to a language, but reality isn't like that.
Either way, I agree it was a poor example; I don't see any particular benefit to the Japanese word in this case.
The difference is that it’s seen as childish in English and people stop talking this way in late elementary school, aside from limited uses (like buzzing)
We are a French-Japanese family and we are delighted to present you our family book project : 100 Japanese onomatopeias illustrated by 100 different artists from 35 countries.
Best to you all!
The M&M&m&m family www.shuwashuwabook.com
We are a French-Japanese family and we are delighted to present you our family book project : 100 Japanese onomatopeias illustrated by 100 different artists from 35 countries.
Best to you all!
The M&M&m&m family www.shuwashuwabook.com