h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Please post your words here.

Include the word itself (including the phonetic spelling i.e. how to say it), the English meaning, and the language thst the word is from e.g.

"Cuckoo", sounds like 'Cook'-'OO', it means the sound a cuckoo makes, from the English language.

Obviously this is an English example (and I don't want words in English) but hopefully you catch my drift.

Cheers,
TWF

Sauerkraut - German word - sour crout - German person

I don't think you've quite got the hang of this onom..onamm..oner...

On second thoughts, well done that's exactly what I wanted.
Have a fish

Batten - French - to prepare for crisis

Batting - English cricket crisis

"kichern", german for to giggle (both onomatopoetic - or whatever the spelling), sounds like, gosh that's heavy ...you don't have that ch sound in english, try to remember Kennedys "Ich bin ein börliner" "KICH-earn" with a scottish-like rrrrolling R....
puh. (That's german onowhatever for *sigh*).

Danke

WF,

One of the few things I remember from studying Ancient Greek at school was that the word for a bird flying was 'Petetai', mirroring the sound its wings make when beating together.

I suppose its roots are the same as for the English pitter-patter.

Is that the sort of thing you're after?

Gary

Yep, cheers, exactly what I'm after. I must admit I've let this onomatawotsit article 'rest' for a bit. I'll pick it up again when I've finished off my pesky batch of subbing articles. But please feel free to add any more examples here in the interim. I was planning to phone up my local Uni languages dept to get some more stuff, but if I can get enough from material within h2g2 itself then that will do nicely.
- TWF

Cantonese: description of a foreign language, expressing that it is gibberish to the person talking about it,
gooleegooloo
To microwave something:
ding (used as a verb)
I'll try to think of more later