How Cats Meow and Dogs Bark in Every Country

It’s no secret that as pet owners, we wish we could talk to our furry friends.

And while some communication does exist, humans can only interpret what their pets are saying as best they can.

Although the sound dogs and cats make are generally the same, it turns out that how we convert animal noises into human sounds often differs by language and country.

The team at WordTips trawled through articles and language resources to find out how dogs bark and cats meow in different countries around the world: https://word.tips/dogs-cats-language-map/

We may not share a common language with our furry friends, but talking to them is worthwhile all the same.

Sadly, unless you’re Dr. Dolittle, it’s impossible to really talk to an animal.

Instead, humans can only interpret what animals are saying as best they can. And even though animals of the same species will generally make the same noises wherever they are on the planet, it turns out that how we convert them into human sounds often differs by language and country.

For example, if English is your first language, you’ll know that Old MacDonald’s famously noisy farm is full of pigs that oink. But did you know that pigs boo boo in Japan and nöff-nöff in Sweden?

Meanwhile, a mouse will squeak to English speakers, but to a Dutch ear, mice will adorably piep.

With this in mind, our animal-loving analysts at WordTips wanted to find out how dogs and cats — the world’s two most popular pets — sound around the world.

The team then mapped the results:

Key finding of the study include:

• Around the world, there are at least 40 interpretations of a dog’s bark.
• In 13 English-language countries, dogs are known to woof, woof.
• Meanwhile, dogs make a hau, hau or how, how noise in 22 countries.
• In most countries, cats make a noise beginning with ‘m’ (e.g., meow).