Onomatopoeia in Czech language
Do you know how dogs bark in Czech? Did you know that "í ha ha" isn´t a sound of someone laughing? Can you imagine what kutululu stands for?
As any other language, Czech has a few ways of creating words. Meanwhile some words were made by compouding, some of them phonetically resemble specific sounds (onomatopoeia). Interesting part is that even though the sound itself could be same, Czech and English speakers wouldn´t probably use same words to describe it. So what will you hear when you visit a farm in Czech? Can you guess which onomatopoeia is used for a sound of someone falling down? Let´s take a look!
Animal sounds:
- kykirikí: used for rooster crowing
- píp píp: used for bird singing
- mňau: used for cat meowing
- haf haf: used for dog barking
- vrrr: used for dog growling
- í ha ha: used for sounds made by horse
- bůů: used for cow mooing
- chro chro, kvík kvík: used for pig grunting 🐽
- tú: used for elephant trumpeting
- bzz: used for insect, usually wasps and bees
Sounds of actions:
- bum, bác: used for a sound when something or someone falls down
- tik tak: used for clock ticking
- škrt škrt: sound of pencil skeching or striking
- (hupky) hup: sound of someone jumping (for example jumping into bed: hupky hup do postele)
- dup dup (dupity, dupity): sound of noisy walking
- blik: sound when light lights on
- pšt: hush!
- kutululu: sound of rolling
- ťapy ťap: sound of small animals or children walking
And that´s it! In case you were wondering what´s the Czech variant of yawning, we say zív. Fart sound is usually prd but Czech people usually like to be very creative so that you could get a bunch of very original responses as well... If you wanted to get to know more about how to say something in Czech or you were interested in studying Czech, you can write me a message. :)
Díky! (Thanks)
March 27, 2020
