Identifying the Sounds in 'Anime' Culture (is this right?)

[Guest sakanaとkoeda]

I apologize in advance if someone has already posted something like this or if this offends anyone...

 

So, a while back I read an article on the Japan Times about a guy who was trying to teach English to a younger Japanese classroom. He noticed that whenever he said 'vowel' [bo,i,n], the students would snicker/laugh, but he didn't know why. It turns out the female chest makes this sound, and they were boys being boys.

 

I probably wouldn't have known before I read this either. I decided to ask a friend who was well indoctrinated with 'anime' stuff if this was really common, and she showed me a video of the "boin, boin" <<(I don't know what it's actually called) song from Zach Bell.

 

I face-palmed.

 

My questions:

If I'm going to be reading VNs raw, I should probably be aware of some common sounds usually seen in this type of media. I know "doki doki" is the heart pounding, girls scream with "kyaaa", and some characters have crazy laughs (Myako with "ku ku ku", Pokemon guy with "fu fu fu", and Okarin with "fuuuuuhahaha"), but what are the others? Like what's "don, don" or "pyun, pyun"? And how about animal sounds?

 

I know from the grammar that there are many context dependant usages, so do these sounds have specific contexts too? (like I see one version over the other)

[Nosebleed]

What you're looking for are called Onomatopoeia. They are not words but sound effects per say.

 

In japanese these are called Giongo. They are used to describe both animal and human sounds as well as ambient sounds and the like.

eg: パチパチ (pachi pachi) = clapping sounds

 

But there's a more specific term in japanese called Gitaigo, these words are meant to describe actions and not sounds

eg: ニコニコ (nico nico) = smile

The words themselves don't have any meaning. 

 

Honestly they're not really a requirement to understand VNs, in fact they're mostly used in manga and sometimes in anime so if you're trying to read vns I don't think you need to dive too into this.

And honestly it's more fun to learn these sounds as you go and if there's one you don't understand you can just google it.

 

And stuff like "fufufu" and "kukuku" are just charismatical laughs, you don't need a dictionary for that

You might want to learn some hiragana, but that's about it.

 

This list might help with the most common ones

 

Or if you don't mind the site being in japanese, this has tons of sounds, probably all you'll ever need. Just click 次の60件 for the next on the list.

[Guest sakanaとkoeda]

Thanks a bunch for the clarification and the links!

I'm just really charmed by the little things that make the experience. And this looks like fun.

[Nosebleed]

Well it certainly is a fun little addition to your vocabulary, I enjoy knowing some of these sounds as well when i'm reading manga, just saying you don't have to dive too into it or force yourself to learn it because it's not an essential thing.

 

I just learned hiragana and katakana and most of the sounds came naturally while I was reading because obviously they're all in kanas so it's not really too hard to learn from experience.

[arakura]

Kun Kun is sniff sniff I believe. I love it

[HMN]

here is a dictionary for the sounds used in manga! http://thejadednetwork.com/sfx/ 

it's really helpful!!

[Mephisto]

These kinds of things are actually in VNs a lot as well. And they're quite annoying to be honest, if you aren't familiar with what they are.