Wednesday, September 15, 2010

How to Bark Abroad

When I was in elementary school, a teacher informed my class one day that in France, the sound a dog makes is written as "oua-oua."  One of my classmates raised her hand to ask: If a French dog came to the United States, would it learn to bark like an American dog?  Our teacher looked straight at the poor girl and sputtered, "Are you serious?"  Oh, the joys of onomatopoeia.

The only reference I could find online to this funny piece by Leslie Lieber and Charles D. Rice, which was first published in This Week Magazine in 1953, was a claim that it had been "widely anthologized."  Perhaps it has been, but I've only ever found it once, in one of my mother's old textbooks.  I reproduce it here for your enjoyment.

Leafing through a book in the Italian language the other day, we were suddenly brought up short by the following passage: "The little dog ran through the streets of Naples barking boo-boo, boo-boo, boo-boo at all the passers-by."

We expected the next sentence to announce that this dog who spouted boo-boo had been whisked away to the nearest canine psycho ward for observation.  But when the author failed to comment on this pooch's peculiar behavior, a disconcerting thought dawned on us.

Could it be that all the world doesn't see eye-to-eye on the fact that dogs say either bow-bow or woof-woof?  Could it be that roosters cock-a-doodle-do in one country and cock-a-doodle-don't in another?  We had always taken it for granted that even though the world was divided on many issues, at least everybody agreed that cows go moo and ducks say quack-quack.

Deciding that these questions merited a survey, we immediately phoned the Italian Embassy in Washington.  Our question as to how dogs bark on the Italian peninsula caused a flurry of embarrassment at the other end of the line.  A chargé d'affaires refused point-blank to bark over the telephone.  Finally, however, an underling agreed to bark.  It came through sharp and unmistakable: boo-boo, boo-boo (spelled in Italian bu-bu).

The news that 45,000,000 Italians are convinced that their dogs bark like Bing Crosby was provocative enough to warrant a full-scale investigation of the whole international barnyard.  So for the next few days, the telephone wires between us and foreign embassies, consulates, and U.N. delegations buzzed while diplomats alternately barked, neighed, mooed, roared, and meowed into the telephone.

We must admit that our hopes for world unity have not been greatly heartened by our findings.  Take the cow, for instance.  Here's a simple-minded galoot who has gone around for centuries uttering one measly word.  If you think people see eye-to-eye on what that word is, you're sadly mistaken.  Moo is American.  The French have the piquant notion that Bossy gives out with a nasal meuh (pronounced as "mur" in demur).

To give meuh a fair test, the writers eavesdropped on a shipment of Normandy cattle being unloaded from a transatlantic freighter.  All we can say is that these cows may have been saying meuh when they left Cherbourg, but they certainly were moo-ing like mad by the time they reached Hoboken, New Jersey.

In India, a country where cows are sacred, they never say moo.  Ganges cows say moe (rhymes with "schmoe").  This is pretty hard to believe.  In fact, if America had cows who said moe, we'd probably worship them, too.

Frankly, we don't know what to make of the rooster situation.  Maybe Americans are too sleepy at four o'clock in the morning to give a hoot what these squawky alarm clocks are shouting.  But we'll tell you one thing: The rest of the world is sharply opposed to us in the cock-a-doodle-doo department.  In fact, Europe presents a more united front on roosters than on any issue since Charlemagne.  Germany, Spain, and Italy are all agreed that what this brid is trying to say is kikiriki (kee-kee-ree-kee), quiquiriqui (kee-kee-ree-kee), and chicchiricchi (keek-kee-reek-kee), respectively.  In Spanish-speaking countries, young roosters say quiquiriqui, but the old ones go quiquiriqoooo.  France deviates slightly in favor of cocorico; Japan votes for kokekkoko - all far cries from cock-a-doodle-doo.

Most of the Western world goes along with the U.S. conviction that ducks quack.  But you can't argue a Chinese out of the certainty that Cantonese ducks say ap-ap.  Ducks in Japan go around spouting ga-ga; Arabic ones - bat-bat; Rumanian - mac-mac.  If you should ever go duck hunting in Germany and hear a quack-quack, don't be too quick to shoot.  In Germany, ducks go quack-quack all right - but so do frogs.

The cats of the world present a fairly solid front.  Should you, on a trip around the globe, be suddenly awakened in the middle of the night by a miaow, it would be pretty safe to throw a shoe at the back fence.  You would hit a cat.  This holds true everywhere except in Arabic-speaking countries and Japan.  A diplomat from The Land of the Rising Sun insisted that Nipponese cats say nyah-nyah.  In Arab territory. felines express themselves under ordinary circumstances with nau-nau.

The dog is supposed to be man's best friend.  That's why it's so flabbergasting how people have managed to garble this message this poor animal has been trying to convey all these years.  Spanish dogs, for instance, seem to have some kinship with American Indians.  In their native habitat, Spanish cockers say how-how (jau-jau written in Castilian).  French poodles in Alsace sit on the banks of the Rhine barking oua-oua (wa-wa).

As one goes progressively eastward, the ways of the dog become more and more inscrutable.  The Turks are under the impression that their hounds say hov-hov, hov-hov.  Nor is there any arguing with the Russians.  Wolfhounds invented barking.  And believe it or not, dogs in Moscow gather around the Kremlin at night and bay vas-vas, vas-vas at the moon.

It is in China, however, that the canine kingdom goes completely berserk.  We checked and double-checked our information.  In short, the people of China will swear on Confucius' name that their dogs say wang-wang, wang-wang.  Personally, the vision of settling down in any easy chair after dinner with a pipe, slippers, and a dog at our feet who looks up and says wang-wang does not appeal to our sense of domesticity.

We wouldn't want to conclude without mentioning one encouraging sign on the horizon.  The Nutka Indians of Vancouver Island claim that whales say hux under normal conditions, and peu-wu when excited.  Surprisingly enough, the Russian Eskimos living on the Siberian side of the Bering Strait are in perfect accord with the capitalistic Nutka tribe on this point.

From the mouth of a whale, then, comes our brightest promise of world accord.  The whale's hux is the only fact on earth regarding animal sounds which observers accept without a quibble.  If someday we could all attune our ears to accept hux as belonging to a whale - and not to the otter, the sloth, or the Afghanistan loon - it might be the rallying point for a glorious era of peace on earth and good will between men and all the animals in the zoos the world over.

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