“It’s beginning to sound a lot like Quizmas!”
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Hello ihr alle
Day 8 of the epic Advent Calendar, the second trimester of the calendar is about to start and it is time to get a little active again. And today is actually kind of special, because I want to try something new:
A Quiz about Onomatopoeia
And yes… I… I totally copy-pasted this word. I almost broke a finger when I tried typing it, it’s so complicated.
But yeah, Onomatopoeia is the proper term for words that are shaped after the sound they stand for. Like to buzz or to fizz.
Every language has them, but of course they’re a little different in every language, because the sounds are also different.
Nah, kidding… the sounds are of course the same, but they way the people hear them and how they emulate them with their inventory of sounds is different.
Anyway, I made a post about German Onomatopoeia a (long) while ago, so if you want to check that out, you can find it here:
Sounds in German – And Overview
But today, I actually want to try this as a little quiz!
It’s pretty simple: I give you a sound or noise and you have to pick the right verb for it.
I’ve decided to make it a sorting quiz, so you get four sounds and four verbs at a time and you have to sort them. To hear the sound, just click the play button and to move a verb, just tap/click and hold and drag it into the free spot next to the sound. You can change them around as much as you want. We’ll do two rounds, so it’ll be 8 sounds in total.
But if you enjoy this quiz, we can totally do more in the future :)
Let me know in the comments how you did and how you liked it. And also, let me know how well you think the German words match up with the sound they stand for.
I find they match up pretty well, but I’m a native speaker, so of course I feel that way.
Really curious to hear your thoughts.
So yeah, enjoy the quiz, have a great day and I’ll see you tomorrow.
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Solutions:
quietschen (an old bike that needs oil):
knarren (wood of an old door):
knacken (the sounds when cracking a nut):
knirschen (grinding your teeth):
Round 2:
plätschern (a small rivulet):
rasseln (a chain of a bike, a kid with a rattle):
rascheln (dry leaves in fall):
summen (bees):
Audio Speed
Dark Mode
I started tweaking when i got the first round completly wrong.
How is the eating one not ‘Knacken’
I got 4/8, even though I consulted the other article while I was taking the quiz! Ich schäme mich sehr :-(
Kein Grund dafür!!
Dann funktionieren die Sounds für dich einfach nicht :). Das hat nix mit deinem Deutsch zu tun.
By the way, thank you for the extra support for the sponsorships!!
Die englischen Wörter für Geräusche sind für mich auch nicht intuitiv. Splash? Crack? Rustle? Alle bedeutungslos. Naja, okay, buzz hört sich an, wie das Geräusch, das es beschreibt, aber sonst ist es einfach eine Frage des Auswendiglernens.
Die Spende habe ich gern gemacht, weil ich finde, dass dein Ansatz auf die Aufgabe, Deutsch zu lernen, ungewöhnlich gut ist. Die Themen und die Behandlungen sind sehr praktisch (in den du, zum Beispiel, die Unterschiede zwischen Wörtern mit ähnlichen Bedeutungen erklärst), der Humor ist in der Tat humorvoll, und anderswo erfährt man nicht so viel über die Anspannung zwischen den Einhörnern und den Eichhörnchen. Ich danke dir für deine Mühe.
mein Gott I did it all right, finally zero effort pays off :)
Hahahahah :D!!
I didnt know any of these words but I guessed 6 of them correct hahah I guess German makes sense when it comes to sounds
Judging by the comments, it really depends on the person. For some people (like you) the words work really well, but for others they fail completely. Interesting outcome, honestly. I didn’t expect that :)
50% correct – not horrible
Wow, you’re binge-reading the calendar, it seems :)!!
I was on vacation for the first part of the Advent calendar – I’ll finishing catching up today :)
Don
didn’t do well at all, but I liked it!
If you didn’t do well, it’s a testament for how well the German words work in describing the sound for you (aka they suck). It has ZERO to do with your knowledge of German :)
It’s a great quiz. I got ⅜, and only bc I gave up and answered the questions randomly. I didn’t realise you already wrote an article about it. I did remember that Rieke did a video about it but couldn’t be bothered reviewing it. BUT I think in the answer section, you could tell us what makes each sound–it would make it easier to remember. As in–eine Tür knarrt. And it would be good to know a proverb: Knarrende Wagen fahren am längsten, and whether it’s ever used by Muttersprachler. I had to look this up: it means “when something is annoying, often it also persists for a long time.” Samuel Shem expressed it better in his 1970s classic novel House of God: “Gomers never die”.
Anyway, super fun to have the sounds to guess; a bit more meat on the answers might be fun for learning these sounds. As one comment said, “After the quiz I’m none the wiser”.
Nice idea, I added an iconic example to each solution.
I don’t think there’s a proverb for each though.
Not sure that I’m much wiser, but a nice funny exercise!
Haha, nah, it’s really not the pinnacle of didactic. Just a fun little gimmick! And I was curious how well people would do.
My main takeaway is that for some people the words work really well, and for others they fail to capture the sound.
I loved this quiz. I got 8/8, but only because I decided to first read your other article Noises and Sounds in German in order to have any chance of getting correct answers! As for how well I think the German words match up with the actual sounds: having trouble with knarren. To me knarren sounds like it should be a teeth-like chewing noise (maybe because the word in German almost sounds like the English gnaw), or the sound we use in English to imitate a pirate (Arrr!). How do Germans imitate pirates?
However, knirschen seems fairly easy to remember because it kinda sounds like the English gnash. Likely etymologically related?
My favorite word in the quiz is plätschern. To me the German word imitates the sound in a lovely way.
Yeah, I can see how “knarren” would work for teeth grinding. To me, that’s “knirschen” but that’s really just because I am “hardwired” for these words. There’s no real reason why “knarren” wouldn’t fit for teeth.
As for the pirates… they say “Harr, Harr” in German.
Generally, I feel like German does a really good job with “wet”-words and with long, static sounds like “brummen” or “dröhnen”.
Wow! I got all 8 correct, but only because I had some lucky guesses. Great quiz! Vielen Dank for all you do.
I only got 2/8 whoops
Hi Emanuel, can’t sleep so pondering many things including the German Language……. I’m a bit confused about knacken. Like, does it have a relatively broad range of meanings ? If you played me the sound in the quiz I’m not sure what english word i would use for it. If you snap Knäckbrot I assume this sound would also be knacken? Because in my head this is a shorter sharper sound than in the audio clip. The audio clip i assume is the sound of a tree falling ? Like, you can hear the splitting and there is some “texture” almost and it has some duration.. The word “snap” doesn’t seem exactly appropriate
I looked at a couple of examples in Duden
• der Boden knackt unter seinen Schritten – I would guess creak ?? I think if you said “the floor cracked under his footsteps” that would more likely imply the floor was actually splitting
• das Radio, das Telefon, das Gebälk knackt – the telephone? Like a ringing sound ? Now I am really confused. I’d assume with a radio this is more like the sound of some interference?? Or like a static burst from a walkie talkie??
I am also trying to remember if I heard the word knacken in relation to the word schleifen? I went to the orthopaedist because I had a shoulder clicking and I wasn’t sure which word to use to describe the sound and we started to talk about the sensation he was like “schleift es” and I was like , no, because it was more of a light clicking sound /sensation rather than a grinding sensation. But I wondered if knacken can somehow grind a bit? Like the sound of a tree splitting over a few seconds like https://youtu.be/D7Ks_mlOxSY?t=50
I’m also wondering if this crunching sound gearboxes in cars make when you mess up changing gears is somehow relevant?
I just woke up and thought about this some more. I also put “das Telephon knackt” into deepL and it suggested “ the telephone crackles” which i suppose could be refering to a crackling sound in the backgound. So this suggests a sequence of sounds. I’m wondering if you’d use this word for the sound of dusty vinyl or a fire crackling?
I also had the image of a glaciar collapsing a a chain reaction as the cracks rush through the collapsing ice and it splits appart?
could “der Boden knackt unter seinen Schritten” be referring to snapping twigs while walking in a forest rather than creaking woodenfloorboards.
So fire does not “knacken” in my head, what it does is “knistern”. That’s a repeated series of high frequency impulse type noises. That’s also how I would describe static interference on the phone or dusty vinyl.
The word for a glacier collapsing is “krachen”. “knacken” is too small for that.
As for the example with the floor… I find that weird choice of words, but writers gonna write. If it’s twigs breaking, then it’s not the ground, and if it’s old wood creaking, then it’s knarren. But that’s just me :)
So yeah, “knacken” is fairly broad, but the core of it is something breaking. A piece of wood. A short impulse-like noise.
It can be rather deep or “numb” or it can have high elements.
What our joints do for example is definitely “knacken” (to pop). But it does not have an element of grinding.
The noise I picked is not ideal because it is several knacken noises together.
Having said all this… there is no clear definition and rule when (and when not) to use these words.
Don’t overthink it :)
Thanks for your very helpful answers!
This was a hoot (!)
and lots of fun! Thanks!
I am a singer. This exercise is reminiscent of the animal sounds reproduced in songs. In the USA, we have defined sounds we assign to various animals that are completely different from other languages. When I open my mind to the options, I can hear the sounds other people hear at different frequencies. I loved this quiz!
Great idea and good fun, but I only could associate 2 of the 8 words correctly.
Are there answers available, somewhere, or have I missed them?
I added them below the quiz now.
I nailed the first set, so I thought I was fine, but I only got summen on the second set. I thought for sure rasseln was rustle. I couldn’t see how to check answers.
There’s no real way to check the answers other than trial and error. I didn’t think about this, actually :).
“rasseln” can be “to rustle”, but the translation doesn’t really matter all that much. What matters is what sound it resembles. And then you can check what you’d call that sound in English.
Actually, I added the solutions below the quiz now.
Wow, I got all eight. I am still a little stunned that I did it. This quiz was really fun. I’m all for having some more like this. Thanks for your work on this.
Coolest quiz I’ve ever done :-)
It was great wasn’t it :)
6/8
I mixed up rasseln and rascheln – but if only I had said rascheln out loud (instead of in my head) I would have gotten it right. Fun quiz!!