We all think that we know the sounds animals make, with dogs barking "woof" and cats simply meowing, but in other cultures that is not always the case.
Japanese people love their animals, but to them a dog's "woof" is in fact a "wung", while a pig's "oink" is in fact a "boo boo".
While some Japanese animal sounds are similar to their western counterparts, such as the cow which to both cultures "moos", or the cat that "meows" or "neows", others such as the rooster which "kokekokkos" and the mouse that "chuu chuus" are very much different.
A linguist from the University of Auckland says that the reason for the differences is because of the way the animals sound to the Japanese ear in what is just a simple case of onomatopoeia.
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