Onomatopoeic words - how to distinguish and what parts of speech to include

Such an extremely interesting phenomenon, like onomatopoeic words or onomatopoeia, occurs in almost all the languages of the world, but for some reason it is often avoided by studying both native and foreign languages. At the lessons of the Russian language, these words are mentioned casually, only when studying interjections. These two groups do have common features, for example, problems with word formation.

To distinguish between interjections from onomatopoeia is very easy: the first express feelings, not naming them - "oh," "ah," and so on. And onomatopoeic words imitate some sound, for example, "clap", "click", "meow", etc. Of course, this imitation is not perfect, but it is usually understandable to native speakers without additional explanations. It is also interesting that, not being, in fact, a full part of speech, onomatopoeia carries a certain semantics, that is, this "set of sounds" is not devoid of a certain meaning. In addition, the onomatopoeic semantics do not change depending on the context, while the value of the interjection can only be accurately determined depending on the intonation and language situation.

Nevertheless, onomatopoeic words are very important, both in Russian and in other languages. It is with onomatopoeia that speech and the juxtaposition of objects, phenomena, living beings with words that designate them begin to form. For example, many young children will see the fall as "boo", and the car - "bi-bi". In addition, sometimes these words become independent parts of speech, especially well seen in the example of English.

It is curious that almost all the variety of sounds of the world can be put into onomatopoeic words. Examples are extremely simple - any child will depict the buzzing of a bee or the rustle of grass, barking a dog and bleating a sheep. True, in different languages this will sound quite differently, which seems to be an interesting feature of this phenomenon.

The equivalent of the Russian "cock patter" in French is "cocorico", and in English - "cock-a-doodle-doo". In addition, Japanese cats mew not at all like Italian cats. The reason for this, it is believed, is the complex nature of the formation of original sounds. Since the human speech apparatus can not perfectly convey the whole variety of rustles, creaks, rustles and buzzes, the only way out is to simulate them approximately, taking as a basis only some characteristic part of the sound. In addition, there is also a subjective perception of the same sound by different people, that's why Onomatopoeic words in different languages differ from each other, but at the same time have some common basis.

English in the sense of the use of onomatopoeia is extremely interesting, because in it they got a lot of distribution. The buzzing sound - buzz - went into a noun and a verb with a similar meaning, the same thing happened with the hiss sound. And such English words, which have occurred from onomatopoeias, - a large number. By the way, in Russian, too, there are cases when onomatopoeic words pass into independent parts of speech, but most of them are related to Internet slang.