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In current Spanish the standard onomatopaeia for a sheep's sound is "beee". The b is pronounced like the English b, and the e is like the e in "test".
by Al-Khwarizmi 5y ago
In current Spanish the standard onomatopaeia for a sheep's sound is "beee". The b is pronounced like the English b, and the e is like the e in "test".
- thaumasiotes 5y agoIn English it is "baa", with the "aa" pronounced as the vowel in "trap". This is interesting in a couple of ways; the most immediately obvious is that it does not conform to ordinary English spelling. But if you look a little closer, it turns out that it can't conform to ordinary English spelling. There is no conventional way to spell a syllable-final /æ/, because the phonology of English doesn't permit such a syllable to exist at all. /æ/ is a checked vowel in English -- except for this one onomatopoetic word.
- thaumasiotes 5y ago(In the interest of completeness, it's probably worth noting that while the spelling is often simply "baa", it can be lengthened, and the pronunciation is nearly always several syllables long, ba-a-a-a, with the syllables separated by glottal stops.)