May 8: I now recognize this as previously shared. It's worth it to rewrite my comedy if you liked it the first time and if it will lead to firm new territory. Please erase all outside posts that show too many similarities with my posts and enforce my copyright protection.
Tick-tock-tick-tock ding! Sounds like it's time for Onomatopoeia and 'U'! I'm Chris Crickit!
Few people know that onomatopoeia is not one language, but many. It can vary dramatically from region to region.
POW! POW! POW! I'm an American, shooting a pistol. I am probably in a built up area, defending myself from gangsters, which traps the sound of my gunshots and increases their volume. Note the sharp attack of the consonant P, an apt choice, given its tendency to explode when pronounced too close to a sensitive microphone. This is then carried by the openest O possible, which must, from there, bend into a half formed W before the word can be said to have been correctly spoken. All this amounts to a loud burst with a sharp attack and a slow decay. On the other hand, a Pole, witnessing a massacre on the wide open plains of his country, would hear something somewhat different: PAK! PAK! PAK!
Duplication of an onomatopoeic term by an outside culture causes considerable confusion and ought to be avoided. In Canada, a civil war almost erupted between the English and the French over the word vroom. The English formed the r with the front of the tongue, as in vdrdrdrdroooom, while the French rolled their r from the back of the tongue, to produce vgrgrgrgroooom. While the English marvelled at the complexity of the francophone utterance, they complained that it sounded too much like gargling, and asked the French to stop using it. The French were offended, and many of them took up race car driving in protest. It would take a stormy federal referendum to finally resolve the issue, reserving cars for the English vroom and outboard motors for the French one.
An interesting rift exists between the British and North Americans, as well, over how to spell a laugh. It became most pronounced in the 1940's, when a popular British comedian was dubbed 'Lord Haw-Haw' by his grateful countrymen. North Americans insisted on calling him 'Lord Ha-Ha,' no matter how many times they were corrected on the name. North Americans indulge fully and fitfully in their laughter, stretching their jaws as widely as possible, in order to accommodate the greatest outflow of guffaws. This rather unbridled approach is less characteristic of the British, whose haw-haw constrains their jaws, keeping the result within polite parameters; at least, on the outside. Hee-haw emerged from the need to smile while saying it.
English offers a peculiar option, its joining of t to h, where any muffling is required in an expression. This allows anglophones to modify a word like bump, in reference to, say, a blow from a lead pipe, into thump, when the weapon might be wrapped in a towel. The gentle British are given to such refinements. Dot, initially fashioned from the sound of a raindrop landing on felt, was further specified as spot, or blurred into blot. Bam got slung into slam, or weakened as wham. Only in the American Badlands has any outside mutation occurred, where beep has mysteriously morphed into meep. Cartoonists are the bravest pioneers in this area, largely responsible for getting thwack admitted to the dictionary. However, whip still has a long way to go if it's ever going to make it to quo-tsh!.
That's all for Onomatopoeia and 'U' this week. I'm Chris Crickit, saying, look carefully at the gentleman sitting across from you. If you notice the hook of a crowbar poking out from under his necktie, watch out. He could be a linguist.
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