Onomatopoeic words

I am dismayed by the seemingly endless number of onomatopoeic (or sound-symbolic) words in Japanese. I rarely have any idea of what these words mean from the sound, except maybe in the vaguest possible sense like "hard sound" versus "soft sound", but even that doesn't seem totally reliable. Usually I try to guess from the context, and then when I check the meaning I more or less instantly forget it, so next time I see the same word I can't remember. Do Japanese people have to learn all these words individually, or is there some instinctive understanding that native speakers acquire? Roughly how many of these words are there altogether? Is the number even fixed, or are new ones invented to order?

There are some few hundred, I think, that really qualify as 'words', that have a fixed meaning and can really stand on their own. (ふわふわ、ぽつぽつ、ゴロゴロ、ざくざく for example).

After that, there are thousands of sound effects and more can be made up on the fly, but that larger set appears as sound effects in manga, or in prose in 「～という音で」 kinds of structures.


I've put a lot of the first sort into flashcards and simply gotten used to the second sort. Once you know a few dozen of them a sense of the sounds comes. It's counter-intuitive at first (to me anyway) that かん and コロコロ are light sounds and がん and ゴロゴロ are heavy sounds (although it becomes more obvious after hearing them spoken by natives a few times.) Most of the other sounds were fairly intuitive - they are mimicry after all - although the 'sounds' of things that don't have a sound (にこにこ、きらきら) are never intuitive. (or maybe I just don't have a good enough sense yet.)

Japanese people learn these words from childhood as the sound effects in children's stories and songs. I expect they already have hundreds of them ingrained before they even learn to read. Of course, when a story is told, the sounds are much more obvious than trying to guess what a few kana are supposed to sound like. Kana just can't tell the whole story of pronunciation especially for onomatopoeia.

Thanks for your helpful and interesting reply Chris (if I may be one of the ones to call you thus).

The most common onomatopoeia for dog's barking is ワンワン in modern Japanese. However, it's described as べうべう, びやうびやう（＝びょうびょう）, びよびよ or びよ in classical Japanese. (Interestingly, the sounds of these words seem to be closer to "bow wow" than "wan wan".) Most native Japanese speakers, including me, would't be able to take these words as dog's barking, similar to foreign words such like "bow wow" or "ouaf ouaf". An interesting example, isn't it?;-)

I never really understood "bow wow" in English. To me it doesn't seem very close to the actual sound. Of course, we also have "woof woof", so it's interesting that the "b- b-" and "w- w-" patterns both appear in both languages.

Edit: Oops, of course "bow wow" is not "b- b-" ... but anyway, there seem to be some parallels there!

I, either, don't think ワンワン is close to the actual sound, but we automatically understand it's dog's barking. However, べうべう or びやうびやう are not so, although people in Edo period could automatically understand them. This can't be a hint how we get the meaning of onomatopoeia, or at least one side of the way to get the meaning?

I suppose a lot of onomatopoeic words become conventionalised or stylised. In English there is the interesting example of "tsk" which is supposed to represent a reproving clicking sound, made by positioning the tongue as if to say "t", but then sucking instead of blowing. This sound does not occur in any "proper" English words. On seeing "tsk" written down, and not understanding the sound it was meant to represent, some people began pronouncing it like "təsk", and now "təsk" has developed a sort of life of its own as a separate "word". I think that "tut" may have a similar story also.

Interesting. There is a similar sound 'made by positioning the tongue as if to say "t", but then sucking instead of blowing' also in Japanese, which is called 舌打ち. The function/meaning is the same, too. (a bit off topic, though)

Hmmmn, as best as I can tell the consonant sounds in dog-bark onomatopoeia are just there to set your mouth to the right shape for a vowel sound. It's not like dogs actually bark with a consonant at the start, it's a pure throat noise after all. Neither bow-wow nor ワンワン ever made sense to me -- the rarer 'ruff' and 'arf' seem more naturally close to the sound of barking (though two quite different barks), though any human language sound takes a bit of imagination - or a bit of active distortion when pronouncing!

It is interesting though that there are such close parallels. (Well, びょう is closer to 'bow' than わん to 'woof', I think, but still.)
The word 'bark' itself seems like it has onomatopoeic roots.

舌打ち is called 'clucking your tongue', though that's a kind of awkward phrase that I've rarely heard spoken on only occasionally read. Usually people just make a verb of 'tsk' and call it 'tsking'.

It reminds me of ちっ though, which I couldn't understand what it meant until I saw it in a subtitle and heard it pronounced at the same time. Then it made sense. We have a similar sound in English sometimes (that sometimes follows a cluck of the tongue), but I don't think it has a written form, or perhaps 'sheesh' does double duty for that sound and the actually exclamation 'sheesh'.

Yeah, ちっ is used to represent the sound of 舌打ち, and the sound ちっ(not sucking but blowing) is actually pronounced as a 舌打ち. (ちぇっ is another one, though the nuance is a bit different.)

Some verbs have onomatopoeic roots also in Japanese, e.g., 驚く is from an onomatopoeia おどろおどろ and すする is from the sounds of slurping. In the contrary, some onomatopoeic words have nounal/verbal roots, e.g., きらきら is considered from a noun 綺羅 or 雲母, and つやつや is from 艶. These onomatopoeic words are not from their sounds, so it would be hard to guess the meaning just form the sound of the word.

こんにちは。
私は日本語の先生です。
Onomatopoeic wordsを勉強する時、日本のマンガを読むと、とてもよいです。
なぜなら、絵(visual)と音(sound)がいっしょですから。

日本の子供はマンガでOnomatopoeic wordsを勉強します。
マンガをたくさん読むと、Onomatopoeic wordsになれますから、たくさん読んだほうがいいです。