Sunday, March 08, 2009 : 10:58 PM

Much better than oink

A Russian family was visiting. Something I might ask someone of another language is what sound a cat makes or a cow or a rooster, just to find out what they say in their language. American English might say meow, moo and cocka-doodle-do while Chinese might say neow for the cat, etc. So, I asked the Russians about pigs. I illustrated that Americans might say "oink oink" for the pig sound. They laughed at the oddity. They said pigs said "nif nif" (or, if you're familiar with German, it's more like nöf nöf), which make us laugh. I said we had a story of the Three Little Pigs. They conferred with each other and responded that, oh, that story was called Nöf Nöf, Nof Nof, and Nuf Nuf, which made us laugh even more. On reflection, Nöf Nöf makes a LOT more sense than oink.