animal sounds

Animal Sounds

These are the sounds animals "make" in various languages. Can you produce them? Why are some of them similar and others different?
Note: A colon following a vowel indicates a longer duration, and a capital N indicates a nasalized pronunciation. Transcriptions of some sounds were simplified.

Language	Cat	Dog	Duck	Cow
English	meow	bow-wow	quack-quack	moo
Arabic	miaou miaou	haw haw	couak couak	mooooooo
Chinese (Mandarin)	miao miao	wang wang	gua gua	mu mu
Croatian	mijau	vau-vau	kva-kva	muuuu
Dutch	miauw	woef	kwak kwak	boeh
Esperanto	miaw	boj	gik-gak	muu
Finnish	miau, kurnau	hau hau/vuh vuh	kvaak kvaak	ammuu
French	miaou	ouah ouah	coin coin	meuh
German	miau	wau wau/wuff wuff	quack, quack	mmuuh
Hebrew	miyau	haw haw/hav hav	ga ga ga	moo
Hindi	mya:uN, mya:uN	bho:-bho:	baak-baak-baak	ba:N ba:N
Hungarian	miau	vau-vau	hap-hap	bu
Italian	miao	bau bau	qua qua	muuuuuu
Japanese	nyaa	wanwan, kyankyan	gaagaa	moo
Norwegian	mjau	voff /vov-vov	kvakk-kvakk	mø
Polish	miau	hau hau	kwa kwa	muuuuu
Portuguese (Brazil)	miau	au-au	qua qua	muuuu
Russian	myau	gav-gav	krya-krya	muu
Spanish	miau	guau guau	cuá cuá (Spain), cuac cuac (Argentina)	muuu
Swedish	mjau	vov vov	kvack kvack	muu
Turkish	miyauv, miyauv	hav, hav	vak, vak	mooooo
Ukrainian	myau	haf-haf	krya-krya	muuu

Based on sounds listed in "Sounds of the World's Animals", compiled at Georgetown University

via laits.utexas.edu