Sounds of the World’s Animals
You may think you know a thing or two about wildlife, but if you can reel off the facts in this website, I’ll eat my mousemat.
OK - we in the English-speaking parts of the world would agree that dogs go woof and ducks go quack, bees buzz and cats meow - right?
Well, just so you know, people around the world don’t all hear grunts, squeals and whinneys with the same ears. Far from it.
In Mandarin Chinese, dogs go wang while in Russian it’s gav. Ducks in France go coin coin ( with a French accent, obviously) and in Albania, the consensus is that ducks say mak, mice qip qip and turkeys krrull. Japanese bees don’t buzz, they bun, and, best of all… well, let’s not spoil it, just go and see for yourself.
Top marks for simplicity in this site - it’s not huge and there’s no real need for snazzy animations and graphics. With some of the animals there’s the added bonus of animal sound files, for which you’ll need the QuickTime plug-in. The whole site is put together by someone at the Georgetown University linguistics department, so there’s an interesting explanatory section too. Other than that, just sit back, browse through, and get practising your Greek frog impressions.