Cock-a-doodle-doo! (Or was that Kèkèréèke?)

We had another exciting "first" on our farm today. Just as the sun was beginning to rise this morning, I thought I heard from where I sat at my desk a faint call coming from the barnyard. I didn't pay much attention at first, but after hearing it a couple more times, I hopped up and opened the back door. And there it was, plain as pancakes: "Cock-a-doodle-doo!" Our 20-week-old rooster, Captain Haddock, had finally mastered his crow! The girls were soon down with me admiring our valiant feathered friend and celebrating this new rite of passage. And a rite of passage it is, both for him and for us. He is now the undisputed king of the barnyard, and we now have a bona-fide farm. (Is there anything, after all, that makes a place feel like a farm so much as a rooster's morning crow?) 


My husband, prone as he is to humbling the elated, quickly corrected us when he heard the news. "Captain Haddock didn't say 'Cock-a-doodle-doo,'" he asserted. "He said, 'Kèkèréèke'" (pronounced “kaykayrayaykay”). Of course, he was right, according to what he was taught growing up Yorùbá in Nigeria. I listened again to the Captain. Gee, I thought, it doesn't sound much like either "cock-a-doodle-doo" or "kèkèréèke." This started me thinking about all the different ways people around the world have interpreted the sound of the rooster crow. When I lived in Haiti, I learned that roosters say "koukouyoukou" or "kikiriki," depending on what part of the country you're in. Here is a small sampling of the way the cock's crow is pronounced in other languages around the globe (according to the websites www.yawiktionary.com and en.wikipedia.org):

Arabic Bosnian, Bulgarian, Croatian, Hungarian	Kuku-kookoo, kuku-reekoo, or esku kookoo Kukuriku
Chinese	Cantonese: Gokogoko    Mandarin: Gou gou
Dutch	Kukeleku
French	Cocorico
German	Kickeriki
Greek	Koukouríkou
Hindi	Kukruukuu
Icelandic	Gaggala gaggala gú (my favorite!)
Indonesian Italian	Kukuruyuk Chiicchirichí
Japanese	kokekokkō
Norwegian	Kykeliky
Polish Russian	Kukarekú Kukuryku
Spanish Tamil	Quiquiriquí Kokkara-ko-ko
Thai	Ake-e-ake-ake

So is there anything we can learn from these various interpretations of rooster crows? The first thing that strikes me is how very similar so many of them are to one another, a reminder perhaps of just how similar and related we humans are to each other despite all the distances and divisions between us. One of the most obvious commonalities among the pronunciations above is that nearly all of them start with the "k" sound. This surprised me, as it's hard for me to hear that sound at the beginning of Captain Haddock's call.  Could it be that humans have so often interpreted the rooster's crow this way not so much because of the sound the rooster actually makes, but because of how suddenly and boldly he begins? A possibility to ponder. The second thing about this collection that strikes me is how out of step the English interpretation is with most of the rest. I guess that's not too surprising, given English-speakers' affinities for the non-metric system and fluffy white bread. But surely there is a more sophisticated explanation for this deviation from the norm. (Our quirky “Cock-a-doodle-doo!” seems to come from the Gaelic “Cuc-a-dudal-du.”) Do let me know if you come up with your own etymological explanation.

In the meantime, I think we'll all agree that's enough ruminating and crowing for one day.