Folium: Meows of the World via zkotami
Folium: Meows of the World via zkotami
Folium: Meows of the World via zkotami
Click the image above to embiggen!
Did you know that humans aren’t the only ones to speak foreign languages!
In language, we assign sounds to different letters of an alphabet, and then arrange them in different patterns to form combinations called words. While we have a pretty good idea that the sounds that cats and dogs make are the same all over the world, how we interpret them and transcribe them into many languages are all very different.
This illustrates a cool lesson on phonetics and, more importantly, perspective.
This perspective recognizes a universal utterance (animal sounds!, and transforms it into a pattern of signs and symbols that bridges the gap between human and animal. The variety of languages show us the variety of cultural perspectives around the world, whether it be through a Latin alphabet, Greek, Cyrillic, East Asian, and more! This is how different people around the world understand the same sound. It’s like the Rosetta Stone for cats!
Folium: Meows of the World via zkotami and Facebook
“Meow” is just a furry example of something much larger. Think about words like love and hate, war and peace, life and death. We take the meanings of these words for granted when we only see them through a single perspective. Multilingualism adds dimensions to all words and their meanings!
Have you seen similar examples for dogs, cows, horses, or other animals? Let us know in the comments below!
Resources:
The LEAF Project
www.leaflanguages.org
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