What is the onomatopoeia for?

Gasp?

“sigh” does not appear to be imitative. It’s from Old English sīcan “to draw breath”.

The main purpose of onomatopoeia is to imitate the original sound and make a sentence more interesting. It can be used as an attention-getting device in a sentence. To a certain extent “Sigh” can be considered onomatopoeia because it represents the sound that is made when a person is sighing.

Pshaw!

Buzzzzz. Or even bzzzzz with no vowel.

Tchah!

Hmm lol I think we have to keep looking. And sigh I think is borderline onomatpoeia.

I find it slightly bemusing that onomatopiea’s can change per culture or language.

Though is probably due to the approximation involved as well as the emphasis on different… Hmm can’t think of the word.. but German for example is guttural and the elocution of English speakers are is widely varient but proper English is very crisp and concise spoken at the front of the mouth, spanish and French seem more fluid and musical and all the languages have tendencies to use different parts of the alphabet and letter combinations quite differently. Therefore their ears are trained to pick up those sounds more readily.

As a child when I first learned about onomatopiea’s I would repeat a sound over and over trying to exactly copy the sound phonetically. With animal’s I would listen. I found that American’s choice to be inaccurate or incomplete. I was doing the same thing last night with the exaggerated inhale before I went to sleep. Sadly I failed to adequately express the sound.

Wouldn’t it be lovely to capture a bird’s song or call phonetically? Like chickadees or some such manner.

Are you referring to the fact that these days a lot of people (perhaps thinking that they are animated cartoons or that speech is a voiced text message) say the word “sigh” instead of or along with making the actual exhalation of breath that we call a sigh?

Exactly, some form of written expression. @Jeruba

Hummmmm… Onomatopoeia is for people who like long words and for people who love tintinnabulation.

Oh, and they might like hum and hummmm… also, as they are onomatopoetic.

@ETpro I just have a penchant for words and sounds.. and the expression they represent.

Caught me I like hmmming and humming, but I don’t stop there I am constantly playing with new sounds and how to create them to nonverbally communicate an emotion or something undefinable.

Tintinnabulation love it. Thanks word of the day.

Ungha! Am I supposed to come up with more?Emmmm. What can I say? Ha! There aren’t that many. Blagh! They’re so rare they are not worth contemplating when the fact is you have to go back and consider all you love, ooohhhhh!; and all you viscerally hate, eweew!

Gah! I just can’t handle it.

Phish..the consequence of their rareness implies value. Added to intrigue factor what negative verbal sounds did the Neanderthals use prelanguage was it the hmmphs, and uhhuh, urgh, meh?

Or how about the context of intonation, body language and microexpressions we lose in written (which we still have some reference due to the telling of the heaviness of the pen stroke, margin usage, slants, swirls and size) but now texts, that can only be conferred by txtspk, smilies, and creative spelling. At which point in the informal address we should take liberty with spelling, word choice and the occasional sound.

By the way read some Chuck Palinuck and you will be presented with a vibrant and useful arsenal of hisses and aiiiieega’s.

Then there is bedroom play, I still experiment with the mewl and uhhaaaayeas in that primal and intimate place.

But cheers you managed to karoom quite speedily through the basic list.