11 - Animal Sounds

Hello and welcome to episode 11 of the Gold Forest English podcast.

First of all, I should apologize for the long time, the long wait between the last episode, episode 10 and this one. Recently I have moved to a new apartment and so this past week or so has been extremely busy for me - organizing my new place and getting electricity and gas and water set up. So I've been very busy and I haven't really had much free time for making a podcast. So please accept my apologies for the delay.

Today I want to talk about animals, or more specifically, animal noises. I had this thought whilst I was on the train, yest…two days ago, I think? I was thinking about animal noises and how they are different in different languages. So when we are young children, it’s very common to learn about different animal noises and what noise they make, but in different countries and different cultures around the world, these noises are not the same. The animal is the same, but the noise they make is not the same. So today, I want to talk about the sounds that animals make, in my opinion, as an English man who grew up in England. My childhood in England and the animal noises that I learned. I want to talk about them and share them with you today, and I'm sure you'll find that they are quite different to the noises that you are familiar with.

Let's start off with a big one. What noise does a dog make? Growing up in England, I learned that a dog says woof woof. A dog says woof woof. What does a dog say in your language?

In English, a cat says meow meow meow. A cat says meow, but what does it say in your language?

I'm sure that there are some animals which are the same. For example, in England, a snake says hissss hissss hissss. And it’s difficult for me to imagine that a snake would make a different lang- a different sound in another language. So maybe it’s the same for your language, that a snake says hisssss, but some are definitely different.

For example: um, the bird that lives on a farm and sings loudly in the morning. We call it a rooster. The like male chicken that will sing loudly in the morning. What does a rooster say in the morning? In England, it says cock-a-doodle-doo, cock-a-doodle-doo. And I'm 100% sure that it does not say the same thing in other languages, because I think it's very strange. Cock-a-doodle-doo. That's what a rooster says in the morning on a farm when the sun comes up in England.

Speaking of farms, there are other animals that are commonly on a farm. For example, a pig. A pig says oink, oink, oink. A pig says oink in English. A cow says moo, moo. A cow says moo. And a horse says neigh. A horse says neigh, neigh, neigh.

I think lots of farm animals have different sounds in other languages. I think it's very interesting that these animals can be universal. We have the same types of animals all over the world, but we have such different ideas of what sounds they make, what kind of words or sounds that they speak. Even though the animal is the same, our perception, our understanding of their language is very very different. And as children we learn these completely different sounds.

I don't really have a point for today's episode, I just wanted to talk about this topic because I thought it was a bit funny, a bit strange, a bit amusing to consider the different sounds that animals make around the world. So hopefully you enjoyed my British English animal sounds.

Okay. I hope you're doing well as we're getting closer and closer to the end of the year. Thank you very much for listening and I'll see you in the next episode.

I promise it won't be such a long wait.