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Words that describe movements 의태어 | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room |  | |
 Jiwon Triglot Moderator Korea, South Joined 6436 days ago 1417 posts - 1500 votes  Speaks: EnglishC2, Korean*, GermanC1 Studies: Hindi, Spanish Personal Language Map | Message 1 of 7 11 September 2009 at 12:14am | IP Logged | ||
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While answering a question about Korean, it never occurred to me that this class of words often employed in Korean was non-existent in English. They are called 의태어 (ui-tae-eo, 擬態語), and direct transation of meaning would be something like "a word used to describe, compare character/shape/movement".
Don't think it works like a normal adverb or adjective. For example, when you describe a tortoise's movement, you can say it's slow (느리다) or heavy (무겁다), but in Korean there is another word to describe this crawling motion - "엉금엉금" So, I was wondering... do other languages also have this feature? o_O 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5766 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 2 of 7 11 September 2009 at 2:00am | IP Logged | ||
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Well, Japanese has just the same kind of 擬態語 (gitaigo).
In German, there of course also are words to describe a motion or state, but they aren't one distinct group, and usually wouldn't be grouped with the onomatopoetic words like in Japanese (onopatopoeia is children's or poets' language for me) For Japanese, it seems to me that they often used an original word like 綺羅 (きら; キラ) kira - fine clothes, finery and duplicated it to get キラキラ kirakira - glitter, sparkle, twinkle (I can't bet on this, it just seems kind of plausible to me) In German, the words I can think of are often using the present participle or are adjectives that seem related to verbs, and there don't seem to be so many. To describe the movement of a turtle I would use the word 'schwerfällig' which comes from 'schwerfallen', 'to be difficult' (etwas fällt jemandem schwer - something is difficult for somebody; mir fallen die spanischen Verbformen schwer) Edited by Bao on 11 September 2009 at 2:02am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Z.J.J Senior Member China Joined 5608 days ago 243 posts - 305 votes Speaks: Mandarin* | Message 3 of 7 11 September 2009 at 6:19am | IP Logged | ||
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_sound_symbolism
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| Choscura Diglot Groupie United States Joined 5548 days ago 61 posts - 82 votes Speaks: English*, Thai | Message 4 of 7 18 September 2009 at 8:41pm | IP Logged | ||
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These words do exist, even in English, but are not separated into a separate category. Maybe they aren't as developed, perhaps? But off the top of my head, "Lumbering" (slow, heavy, with great weight and momentum), "Plodding", "traipsing", and some that are phrases or descriptions, such as "a cowboy's gait" or "the way a sailor walks".
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| Jiwon Triglot Moderator Korea, South Joined 6436 days ago 1417 posts - 1500 votes Speaks: EnglishC2, Korean*, GermanC1 Studies: Hindi, Spanish Personal Language Map | Message 5 of 7 19 September 2009 at 10:34am | IP Logged | ||
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Choscura, the words you describe have origins from different words. However, these mimetic words I'm talking about don't have any discernable connections to any other words. Plus, as you pointed out, they belong to a separate category of words.. I don't think English has quite the same feature.. :/
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| snoppingasusual Quadrilingual Hexaglot Groupie Lebanon Joined 5567 days ago 49 posts - 65 votes Speaks: Arabic (Egyptian), French*, English*, Arabic (Written)*, Arabic (Levantine)*, Spanish | Message 6 of 7 26 September 2009 at 10:31pm | IP Logged | ||
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Well, I cannot think of anything that resembles this phenomenon, but in Arabic, every single animal has a specific word for its sound. Edited by snoppingasusual on 26 September 2009 at 10:32pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Jiwon Triglot Moderator Korea, South Joined 6436 days ago 1417 posts - 1500 votes Speaks: EnglishC2, Korean*, GermanC1 Studies: Hindi, Spanish Personal Language Map | Message 7 of 7 27 September 2009 at 4:32pm | IP Logged | ||
That's an onomatopoeia, I believe. I'm talking about the equivalent for movements, not sounds. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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