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I like croak way better as the English representation.
Forgot the best one.
The French have a few examples of naming things the way they sound. Their word for bullfrog is the sound they make:
Ouaouaron
Brekekekèx-koàx-koáx
There’s a Julia Donaldson - Axel Scheffler children’s book called “Charlie Cook’s Favorite Book” in which the sound a frog makes is “reddit”.
Kero Kero
FROPPY!
Amphibians are so sick. My parents made a little fish pond like ten years ago and of all the cool things to visit/reside in it over the years the frogs are the coolest by far.
COQUI - Spanish
Interesting, I say CROAC. Probably there’s a lot of geographical variation.
Kum Kum
OP OP
OPPA GANGNAM STYLE
This has popped up in the wild a few times recently
Why
People reference hit song lyrics all the time. Really muddies discourse with other cultures, sometimes.
Interpreter: “Ok he said uh… hang on before I can translate that, do you know who Hannah Montana is?”
Still a fantastically catchy song
(POLISH)
( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
You’re my butterfly
Sugar, baby
German is wrong. Its Quak.
I suspect that’s deliberate to make someone that speaks English and doesn’t know German still get the correct impression of what it actually sounds like, rather than get the spelling right
Kwaak is correct for Dutch. I suspect someone got Dutch and Deutsch mixed up.
As seen with Japanese. I don’t speak the language but I’m pretty sure they write it differently.
ケロケロ
Yeah. It sounds correct but the spelling is not known to me
I dont know why hungarian is there but 💯🇭🇺HUNGARY MENTIONED🇭🇺💯 /s. Also yes we do say brek/brekk or brekeke
Brekeke…
Keke…
Kek…
Bojler elado!
Gondolom nem lopott, vadi új?
mu mu (toki pona).
All animals say “mu” in Toki Pona btw.
They’re justified and they’re ancient!
We need a version of “What does the Fox Say” with every animal sound replaced with ‘mu’.
Hot take, English got it wrong. I’ve never heard a frog make a sound like “ribbit”. German or Turkish, on the other hand, seems like a sensible and appropriate sound a frog would make.
I’ve definitely heard some sort of frog/toad make the “ribbit” sound, but I’d say the German “kwaak” is probably more common. The various Asian sounds seem odd to me though. I suppose it is entirely possible the frogs makes different sounds there.
IIRC different species of frogs make wildly different sounds, so all of the languages might just be what type of frog lives in that country.
Hot take, English got it wrong. I’ve never heard a frog make a sound like “ribbit”.
It’s a real thing. Super common in the Southern US when I was a kid.
Yeah, that’s the kind of frog sound I’ve always known to be most prominent. I was also wondering just how much the most common species in a region affects the onomatopoeia, along with the language used.
Have you ever set by a creek on a warm summer night? It’s more like riib riib riib riib, but I can see where ribbit came from
Edit: found this which is pretty close to what I’m talking about.
When I was young and lived in the country with a big pond and marshland, most of the frogs went “THUMMM” at night (like this https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6qHBRXLHXnc) and the others were more like a high pitch creaky door or one of those hollow wooden frogs with the back ridges that you play with a stick, like this https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=p-XPYXuCOjg
I’ve never lived near any sort of frogs that I’d describe as making a riib sound
I think this is the sound you are talking about? It’s kinda harder to pick out in your video for me, but there’s a distinct riib sound there over the top of everything else that’s absent from the other video. If that’s not the sound you are talking about, I’m pretty sure it is the source of “ribbit”. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8fJWGKbXw4Y
Yep, that’s a far better example of what I menat.
Where I grew up if it made a deeper noise it was a bull frog. Normally a Ruuuurp like call.
Counterpoint: “Kwaak” is the sound a duck makes, so frogs gotta say something else.
Lithuanian is “kva kva”
