Meow

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A meow /miˈaʊ/, also spelled miaow, is the most familiar vocalization of cats. A meow can be assertive, plaintive, friendly, bold, welcoming, attention soliciting, demanding, or complaining. It can even be silent, where the cat opens its mouth but does not vocalize. Adult cats do not meow to each other, and so adult meowing to human beings is likely to be a post-domestication extension of mewing by kittens.[1]

Spelling

In English, the first use of the spelling "meow" was in 1842. Before that, the word could be spelled "miaow", "miau", or "meaw". [2]

Language differences

Different languages have correspondingly different words for the "meow" sound, including:

Written Form Languages in Use
meo-meo Vietnamese [3]
meong Indonesian
miaou French
miau Belarusian, Croatian, Hungarian, Finnish, Lithuanian, Malay, German, Polish, Russian, Portuguese, Romanian, Spanish and Ukrainian
miauw Dutch
miao (喵) Mandarin Chinese, Italian
mjav Danish
mjau Swedish and Norwegian
miaŭ Esperanto[4]
[miyāʾūṉ] Error: {{Transl}}: unrecognized language / script code: urdu (help) (میاؤں) Urdu[5]
mjá Icelandic
mňau Czech
ngeung Kapampangan[6]
njäu Estonian
niau Ukrainian
niaou (νιάου) Greek [7]
nyā (ニャー) Japanese
ya-ong (야옹) Korean

In some languages (such as Chinese 貓, māo), the vocalization became the name of the animal itself.

See also

References

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es:Maullido

fr:Miaulement

nn:Mjauing

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  6. ↑ [1] "Ngeung, “a cat’s meow;” ngumeung, “to meow;” ngeungan, “against whom the cat meows, like at one who is eating.” (p. 96)
  7. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
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