My favourite home video of my granddaughter is when as a little girl (she’s a teenager now) leading all in attendance to sing along to Old MacDonald’s Farm.
A happy rhyme that virtually standardizes the sounds made by animals in the English language. This and similar mnemonical verse have been used as teaching aides to develop and broaden the vocabulary of a generation
Onomatopoeia
Onomatopoeia are forming of words that phonetically imitates the sound made. Hence, we think of the roar of a lion, and the meow of a cat.
The etymology of onomatopoeia is derived from the Greek, Ονοματοποιία, onomatopoiia, meaning ‘name making’.
Over time these words have evolved into new words. In medieval England one would say the ‘blairt’ of a sheep, often spelt blet, though pronounced with a drawled vowel. Compared to our familiar ‘bleat’, it may seem a more accurate imitation.
Not restricted solely to animals, we describe the sounds made by machinery such as the ‘vroom’ of a car or the beep of its horn. And the illustrated use in comic art where an altercation might be depicted as a fist with “Thwack!” or “Kapow!” in a speech bubble.
Linguistic and cultural differences
Onomatopoeias aren’t idiosyncratic to the English language alone. The familiar ‘tic tock’ of a clock is ‘tic tac’ in Italian and Spanish, 滴答 Di Da in Chinese Mandarin, カチ カチ Kachi Kachi in Japanese and टिक-टिक tic-tic in Hindi.
Animals such as the cow and the pig referenced in the title sound the same whichever country you’re in, yet the friendly meow of a cat is ニャ nyaa in Japanese, and as a dog would Bau Bau in Italian it might Meong meong in Korean.