Children love animals and reproducing animals’ sounds, and this as far as I know is true in all cultures and countries. However, funny enough, animal sounds do change from country to country, or to be pedantic, the way people reproduce animal sounds change.
This is no minor thing, in bilingual families you’ll see daddy saying that the dog goes woof woof, while mummy insists it goes ouah ouah. Even more, you’ll see mummy and daddy shaking their heads. Somehow, I don’t kow why, it’s easier to accept that people speak different languages than to come to terms with the idea that animals do the same… May be it’s because animals’ noises are something we learn as kids and never question ever after? I don’t know, but I know that this is important, the animal sounds are normally part of our fond childhood memories, and they are closely linked to the language, or languages, we speak.
So, if you are in a bilingual family, or you family lives abroad, how do you manage multiple animal sounds? I would say you should alsways use the sounds corresponding to the language you are using, and if you are lost, here you can find some help, this site reports the animal sounds in 17 languages, including Japanese and Urdu.
Furthermore, on Wikipedia we found some pages with the verbs corresponding to the animal sounds, here they are for Italian, English, German and French.
My personal experience is that this can be pretty tricky, let us know how it works for you…
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Roaring Lion picture by Tambako the Jaguar
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