mistakescontinuetobemade:

prokopetz:

Do you ever wonder if the reason that different cultures have such wildly different onomatopoeias for the noise a cat makes is that cats have regional accents?

Actually, they do.

There’s a lot of evidence that animals have regional accents. Both birds and sperm whales in fact to vocalise differently depending on where they grew up.

As for felines themselves, there’s an ongoing study underway on at Lund University precisely about this.

As a phonologist who has watched entirely too many cat videos on the internet, I can confirm that cats of differing countries do have differentiated accents in their cries. Felines in England tend to have shorter, lower “mow” whereas Japanese cats do tend to make glides into high vowels, and are sustained longer, such as the ubiqutous use of “nyaaaan” in Japanese onomatopoeia.

Hope this helps.