LD's Guide to Japan

One of the things that fascinates me the most about the Japanese language are Japanese onomatopoeias. They use them in regular conversation in such a variety of ways that I’ve never seen before.  First of all, they are most often (though certainly not always) a repetition of the same sound twice.  And they do have basic ones like we have in English, for example “gan-gan” is roughly equivalent to “bam” or “bang” in English.  ”Kushan” is the English “atchoo.”  But they get even more specific than that.

“Bisha-bisha” is the sound of liquid continuously hitting a surface, like rain on a window (like “pitter-patter,” although “pitter-patter” can be used to describe things other than just liquid).  ”Kyat-kyat” is the sound an animal or person makes intermittently when it’s excited or in high spirits.  ”Zubu-zubu” is the sound of something soft being repeatedly stabbed or penetrated by something long and thin, like walking through fresh snow (the snow being repeatedly penetrated by your feet).

“Doki-doki” is one I hear and use fairly often.  It is the onomatopoeia for a heartbeat, like the English “lub-dub,” but more specifically a hard and/or fast heartbeat.  And although it represents the sound of a heartbeat, it’s used in regular conversation to describe the feeling of nervousness.  Instead of simply saying “I was nervous,” people will often say “I was doki-doki,” which means exactly the same thing, only it’s much more descriptive of the actual feeling.

And there are so many others that, in the same way, do not describe sounds, but instead certain types of movements, actions, or feelings.  And they can have rather complex meanings.  The word “fuwa-fuwa” is often used to express something that appears smooth and soft, like baby’s skin or a marshmallow.  And to get more complicated, when my kindergartners, inevitably, start to touch and feel my beard, they often say that it feels “funya-funya,” which means something like “soft but inflexible.”  There’s also “nou-nou,” which means acting carelessly despite being in a situation that requires one to act with care.

I was once trying to explain how difficult it is to eat rice with chopsticks when it’s not sticky because it won’t stay together and the person I was talking to taught me “boro-boro,” which describes when something breaks apart and falls haphazardly to the ground, as does rice from chopsticks when it’s not sticky.

What really amazes me is how commonly they are used and how commonly they are understood.  In English, we don’t really use onomatopoeias that often, aside from, like, animal noises.  But in Japanese there are thousands of them, from the sound that boiling water makes to the rough feeling of sandpaper, and they are used all the time (some more often than others, of course).  I have a dictionary that is solely for Japanese onomatopoeias, that’s how many there are.  And I think it’s a really wonderful aspect of the Japanese language.  ”Doki-doki” is much more descriptive than saying “nervous.”  ”fuwa-fuwa” is much more descriptive than saying “soft.”  It makes conversations way more interesting.