My Favorite Literary Term: Onomatopoeia
Onomatopoeia. You know what it it, even if you don't know you know. If you have ever read a comic book or watched a cartoon, you know what this is. Onomatopoeia is when you name something is named by an imitation of the sound it makes. Superman comics are filled with the boom, pop, and wham-o bubbles that are the most obvious examples of this. If you don't know how to say this word, Webster will help you out here.
On my set of teaching keys, which I keep on the standard lanyard that all teachers and lifeguards seem to have, I have a button that says: oh snap, it's onomatopeia. This button was sent to me by my sister, Ariel, along with some other snazzy English-treachery things.
The reason I love this lit term is that I find myself using noises instead of words all the time here in Turkey as I try to make myself understood by other people. If I can't remember the word for chicken (tavuk), I can make the international chicken noise and people know what I want. In part, I do use pantomime with the quasi-onomatopoeia, but that is only in extreme cases of frustration.
The extreme cases of frustration are normally caused by me leaving my pocket dictionary at home.
I have also noticed that my use of true onomatopoeia in class causes confusion for students. You'd think that most onomatopoetic sounds would be universal, but they are turning out to be cultural. This makes reading some poetry difficult, as rockets don't say "pop" and "bang" here, and although cows do "moo," donkeys say "haw-hee" not "hee-haw".
The world of onomatopoeia is an intersting place.
On my set of teaching keys, which I keep on the standard lanyard that all teachers and lifeguards seem to have, I have a button that says: oh snap, it's onomatopeia. This button was sent to me by my sister, Ariel, along with some other snazzy English-treachery things.
The reason I love this lit term is that I find myself using noises instead of words all the time here in Turkey as I try to make myself understood by other people. If I can't remember the word for chicken (tavuk), I can make the international chicken noise and people know what I want. In part, I do use pantomime with the quasi-onomatopoeia, but that is only in extreme cases of frustration.
The extreme cases of frustration are normally caused by me leaving my pocket dictionary at home.
I have also noticed that my use of true onomatopoeia in class causes confusion for students. You'd think that most onomatopoetic sounds would be universal, but they are turning out to be cultural. This makes reading some poetry difficult, as rockets don't say "pop" and "bang" here, and although cows do "moo," donkeys say "haw-hee" not "hee-haw".
The world of onomatopoeia is an intersting place.
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what is onomatopoeia?
onomatopoeia