Japanese Onomatopoeia in Novels: How to Look Up Sound and Mimetic Words
Hiroki Obara · Developer
The fourth sentence of Natsume Soseki’s 吾輩は猫である (I Am a Cat) has two onomatopoeic words in it.
何でも薄暗いじめじめした所でニャーニャー泣いていた事だけは記憶している。
(吾輩は猫である)
The cat remembers crying ニャーニャー (nyaanyaa, meow) in a dim じめじめ (jimejime, damp) place. The first word copies a voice. The second describes a state, and damp places make no such sound.
Japanese has separate names for these. オノマトペ (onomatopoeia) is the umbrella term for 擬音語 and 擬態語. According to a site for learners from Japan’s National Institute for Japanese Language and Linguistics (NINJAL, in Japanese), 擬音語 (giongo) represent sounds and voices, and 擬態語 (gitaigo) represent how people and things look or behave.
This post counts them in Aozora Bunko texts to show how to spot them in a novel and how far a dictionary will take you. The dictionary is JMdict, the one built into Niho.
Spotting them by shape
A NINJAL column (in Japanese) describes a survey that sorted 1,647 of these words by shape. These were the most common.
| Shape | Examples | Words |
|---|---|---|
| ABAB | わくわく, どきどき | 419 |
| ABっ | きらっ, にこっ | 212 |
| ABり | ぐるり, ずばり | 141 |
| AっBり | すっきり, しっかり | 103 |
| ABん | がちゃん, ぽかん | 102 |
So the markers are repetition, small っ, ん, り and long vowels, as in がーん (gaan).
One root produces several words. ばた (bata) gives us all of these.
ごんは、ばたりとたおれました。
Gon fell with a thud. (ごん狐)
するとかっこうはあわてて羽をばたばたしました。
The cuckoo flapped its wings in a panic. (セロ弾きのゴーシュ)
追分の交番の前まで来ると、ばったり与次郎に出会った。
He ran into Yojiro by chance. (三四郎)
Repetition doesn’t stop at two. A column by Masahiro Ono (in Japanese) notes that Miyazawa Kenji’s children’s stories often repeat three or four times, and go as high as six. The threshing machines at the start of オツベルと象 go のん (non) exactly six times.
稲扱器械の六台も据えつけて、のんのんのんのんのんのんと、大そろしない音をたててやっている。
(オツベルと象)
Katakana or hiragana
Japan’s elementary curriculum guide (in Japanese) lists these words among the types written in katakana, along with foreign place names, foreign personal names and loanwords.
Novels vary a lot. Here are counts for 18 common words, including ごろごろ, にやにや and がたがた, in both scripts.
| Work | Hiragana | Katakana |
|---|---|---|
| 坊っちゃん (Botchan) | 17 | 0 |
| こころ (Kokoro) | 37 | 0 |
| 吾輩は猫である (I Am a Cat) | 67 | 3 |
| 銀河鉄道の夜 (Night on the Galactic Railroad) | 36 | 0 |
| 風の又三郎 (Kaze no Matasaburo) | 33 | 3 |
| 手袋を買いに (Buying Mittens) | 1 | 3 |
| 怪人二十面相 (The Fiend with Twenty Faces) | 5 | 27 |
The same word splits too. 吾輩は猫である has にやにや (niyaniya, grinning) 28 times and ニヤニヤ once. 怪人二十面相 has ニヤニヤ 7 times and にやにや never. Yet laughter in 吾輩は猫である is usually katakana, with ハハハハ 29 times.
For looking things up, it makes no difference. In Niho’s dictionary, にやにや and ニヤニヤ bring up the same entry.
How far JMdict gets you
This count covers the ABAB-shaped words in 風の又三郎 and 坊っちゃん. Words that aren’t onomatopoeia, like いろいろ and なかなか, were removed by hand. がやがやがやがや counts as がやがや, and katakana and hiragana count as one word. Because this was done by hand, a different count could differ by a few words.
| Work | Length | Different words | Found as written |
|---|---|---|---|
| 風の又三郎 | about 30,000 characters | 74 | 62 (84%) |
| 坊っちゃん | about 88,000 characters | 62 | 55 (89%) |
Ordinary words like にやにや, ぐるぐる and ざあざあ are nearly always there. 風の又三郎 is much shorter but has more different words, and a slightly higher share that aren’t listed.
The misses fall into two groups. The first is repeated forms ending in ん or り, like ごとんごとん, どぶんどぶん and ぽかんぽかん. The second is words with no entry in that form, like きろきろ, すぱすぱ and だあんだあん.
What to try when a lookup fails
Cut a long repeat down to one pair. ごとごとごとごと in 銀河鉄道の夜 has no entry. ごとごと (gotogoto) does: clop clop, rumble rumble.
Cut ん and り repeats in half. ごとんごとん has no entry, but ごとん (goton) does: thump, clang, clank.
Include the と. ごろり (gorori) alone has no entry. ごろりと brings up the entry for ごろんと (with a thump, tumbling down).
路傍の草原にごろりと寝ころがった。
He flopped down in the grass by the road. (走れメロス)
Check that you found the right word. Cutting a word in half can land on something unrelated.
みんなはやはりきろきろそっちを見ています。
Half of きろきろ (kirokiro) is きろ, which finds 岐路 (crossroads) and 帰路 (the way home). のんのん in オツベルと象 finds のの, an old children’s word for gods and the sun and moon, though the sentence says 音をたてて (making a sound), so it’s the machines. Onomatopoeia entries carry the label “onomatopoeic” in Niho, and that’s a good check.
When nothing fits, read the sentence. Kenji uses several words with no entry.
しばらく蛍のように、ぺかぺか消えたりともったりしているのを見ました。
There’s no entry for ぺかぺか (pekapeka), but 蛍のように (like a firefly) and 消えたりともったり (going out and lighting up) tell you it’s a way of shining. (銀河鉄道の夜) The elephants in オツベルと象 shout グララアガア (guraraagaa), 15 times in all. And then there’s this line from やまなし, where the surrounding text doesn’t settle on one meaning.
クラムボンはかぷかぷわらったよ。
(やまなし)
Reading aloud is another way in, as in Miyazawa Kenji for Japanese learners. Stretched words like ああまい are covered in Japanese folktale phrases.
After you find the entry
One word can have many senses. A NINJAL column (in Japanese) describes the five categories of Kindaichi (1978) and says ごろごろ (gorogoro) fits all of them. It splits in novels too.
| Sentence | Work | Sense |
|---|---|---|
| 雷もごろごろ鳴っています。 | 風の又三郎 | rumbling (thunder) |
| 覚えず咽喉仏がごろごろ鳴る。 | 吾輩は猫である | purring |
| 丸いものはごろごろどこへでも苦なしに行ける | 吾輩は猫である | rolling |
| 先生のようにごろごろばかりしていちゃ…… | こころ | idly, lazily |
The order of the senses has nothing to do with your sentence, so it takes trying each one in turn.
Some pairs differ only by the voicing mark (the two dots). Here are JMdict’s senses.
| Unvoiced | Voiced |
|---|---|
| きらきら: glittering, sparkling | ぎらぎら: glaringly, blazingly |
| さらさら: with a rustling sound | ざらざら: rough, coarse, gritty |
| ころころ: rolling along | ごろごろ: rolling (of something large and heavy) |
In these three pairs, the voiced word has the stronger, rougher or heavier sense.
For example sentences, the NINJAL site has sentences and manga for words in everyday use, listed by kana and by category. It’s written in Japanese.
Looking up onomatopoeia in Niho
I make Niho, a free reading app for iPhone and iPad with more than 17,000 Aozora Bunko works and a built-in dictionary. It has no ads and no in-app purchases.
For a word you don’t know, long-press it and tap Look up. You don’t need exact word boundaries, because Niho shows the longest word it finds from the start of your selection: じめじめした gives you じめじめ. Finding word boundaries in Japanese has more on this.
Onomatopoeia senses are labeled “onomatopoeic”. To hear a word, tap Speak in the selection menu. Words not in the dictionary can be checked with Jisho, and words you look up are saved to your word book with the sentence you met them in. Getting Started with Niho walks through your first book.
