Language Trainers Blog

Here are some phrases in a few different languages, with their English translations. Each of these sentences has a particular linguistic feature - can you tell what it is?

Latin: in girum imus nocte et consumimur igni (”We enter the circle at night and are consumed by fire”)

Greek: Nipson anomēmata mē monan opsin [νιψον ανομηματα μη μοναν οψιν] (”Wash off my sins, not only my face”)

English: A man, a plan, a canal, Panama!

Finnish: Saippuakivikauppias (”soap-stone vendor”)

Brazilian Portuguese: Socorram-me, subi no onibus em Marrocos (”Help me, I took a bus in Morocco”)

Lithuanian: Sėdėk užu kėdės (”Sit behind the chair”)

Spanish: “Dábale arroz a la zorra el abad” (”the abbott gave rice to the fox”)

Hover here to find the answer: these sentences are all palindromes - words, phrases or numbers that read the same forwards and backwards.

Ferdinand de Saussure supported the idea that language is an absolutely arbitrary system in which the name of a word and its meaning has no natural connection. He stated that even onomatopoeia depend on a particular language and are not natural at all.

Thanks to Adam Jacot de Boinod we can be sure Saussure was completely right. He gives us a list of animal sounds according to different languages - think of the sounds you were brought up with and compare them with the following from around the world:

Birds (tweet tweet)
Arabic: twit twit
Bengali: cooho’koohoo
Finnish: tsirp tsirp
Hungarian: csipcsirip
Korean: ji-ji-bae-bae
Norwegian: kvirrevitt or pip-pip

Bees (buzz)
Afrikaans: zoem-zoem
Bengali: bhonbhon
Estonian: summ-summ
Japanese: bunbun
Korean: boong-boong or wing-wing

Cats (meow)
Indonesian: ngeong
Malay: ngiau
Nahuatl: tlatzomia
Chinese: Mao

Chicks (cheep cheep)
Albanian: ciu ciu
Greek: ko-ko-ko
Hungarian: csip-csip
Indonesian: cip cip
Quechuan: tojtoqeyay
Slovene: civ-civ
Thai: jiap jiap
Turkish: cik cik

Cockerels (cock-a-doodle-doo)
Chinese: gou gou
French: cocorico
Italian: chicchirichí
Portuguese: cocorococo
Thai: ake-e-ake-ake

Cows (moo)
Bengali: hamba
Dutch: boeh
Hungarian: bú
Korean: um-muuuu
Nahuatl: choka

Crows (squawk)
French: croa-croa
Indonesian: gagak
Spanish: cruaaac, cruaaac
Swedish: krax
Thai: gaa gaa
Turkish: gaaak. Gaaak

Frogs (ribbit)
Afrikaans: kwaak-kwaak
Munduruku: korekorekore

Owls (to-whit-to-who)
Korean: bung-buung
Norwegian: uhu
Russian: sova ukhaet
Swedish: hoho
Thai: hook hook

Pigs (oink)
Albanian: hunk hunk
Hungarian: rof-rof-rof
Japanese: buubuu (boo boo)

Sheep (baa)
Mandarin: mieh mieh
Portuguese: meee meee
Slovene: bee-bee
Vietnamese: be-hehehe