Woof, Arf, Ruff, or Bow Wow?

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, my name is Sam, and I’m here with my daughter, Margo, who’s one, and we’re calling from Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Well, hello, Sam and Margo.

Well, Margo and I love books by the children’s author, Sandra Boynton, and we read her books all the time.

And she uses a lot of animal sounds in her books.

Yes, she does.

And we love learning about these onomatopoeia words.

But as we’re reading them, the one sound that kind of stuck out to us was when her dogs make the sound bow wow.

Because we just have never heard a dog make that sound.

And it really made us think, you know.

So we’re wondering if there’s a more unique origin for the phrase bow wow for a dog sound.

Right. That’s a really good question.

So let me ask you, is Margo old enough where she’s imitating animals yet?

Yes. So that is something we’ve thought about because, you know,

Right now, she’s making a woof-woof sound, so it’s a little confusing when there’s also a bow-wow sound.

Yeah, I could see that being an issue because you kind of fixate on one sound at that age.

Good question. Let’s help Margo out, Martha.

Yeah, that is so interesting.

So Margo says woof-woof usually?

Yep.

And so she hasn’t graduated to ruff-ruff?

No, not yet.

Arf-arf.

Yeah, I was going to say, what about arf-arf?

No, there’s a lot of them.

It was yap, yap, and I’m trying to do a great job coming up with different ones.

And then there was growling.

Yeah.

Yep.

Yeah.

Well, you know, what’s interesting about all of these terms that we’re using is that the oldest one is bow wow,

Which I think a lot of people are going to find really surprising,

But it goes all the way back to at least Shakespeare’s time.

You know, in The Tempest, there’s a line, hark, hark, bow wow, the watchdog’s bark.

And he spells it, interestingly, B-O-W-G-H, W-A-W-G-H.

And so that got sort of solidified early in the language.

And the others that we were talking about, like ruff ruff and arf arf, come along much later, like in the 19th century, which I just find fascinating.

That it should be so late for these other onomatopoeias to come along?

Yeah, and in the meantime, Bow Wow sort of got solidified in the language.

So what you’re saying is it’s kind of this problem that we have a difficulty, I guess, explaining sounds in written language.

And we know this with English because English is bad at representing sounds, isn’t it?

Yeah.

When we hear a sound, how accurate can we get at putting it in print?

And it turns out sometimes not very accurate.

Exactly.

And, Sam, I’m also thinking about my dog, who’s a pretty big guy, and I’m trying to imagine him saying bow-wow.

You know, they don’t really make that kind of bee sound, do they?

You know, that sort of labial, I mean, maybe?

But what that bee represents, Martha, is that abrupt start to the sound, that kind of explosive start.

Yes, yes, exactly.

Yeah, I can sort of see him, like his flues, you know, the sides of his mouth, his flues fluttering maybe with the bow-wow.

But, you know, it’s really interesting to look at all the different dog sounds in other languages, too.

I think there might be some that start with B.

Italian is one.

Oh, that’s right.

Bow-bow, right?

Bow-bow, yeah, that’s right.

And there’s some that start with B in Tamil.

And Catalan is b-bup, also B.

And there’s other ones that start with G, which is almost, it’s also abrupt, but it’s not a plosive that starts on the lips.

Yeah, like Greek is gav gav.

Gav gav, yeah.

Spanish is wow wow, and German is vuf vuf, and Korean is mong mong.

I mean, the mong mong in Korean sort of sounds like mow wow, I guess.

Well, those ones that start on the lips, like Icelandic, fuff fuff, that’s happening on your lips again.

And again, that’s happening.

That’s your abrupt sound again, like the bow-wow.

Like the bow.

Yeah.

So a lot of people around the world, a lot of languages are doing their best to represent the sound.

And everybody’s kind of doing an okay job, but not a very good job.

So, Sam, have you all gotten to roosters yet?

Yeah, a little bit.

We’re going through all the aminotons sounds, and we definitely practiced the cock-a-doodle-doo.

Okay.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah, that’s another one in Spanish is kikiriki.

Who is it that’s cocorrico?

Oh, is that, what is that?

I don’t know.

Italian?

I don’t know, but that’s my favorite one.

I much prefer it to cockadoodaloo.

Cocorrico.

Well, I will leave you with my favorite dog barking onomatopoeia,

And this is from Albanian, and it’s ham ham.

Great. We’ll learn that one next.

Well, Sam, thank you for making us make all these sounds.

Yes. Thank you for the help. We’re going to practice.

All right. And you take care, Sam.

Thank you, too.

All right. Bye-bye.

Okay.