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This may not be on-topic for the next 4383 days, but hopefully today someone will help me out.

Last year was the year of the dog, and a common way to write (in English) the Chinese version of what dogs say is wang! wang!.

Today is the first day of the year of the pig. How would I write in English and say what pigs say in Chinese?

I'm looking for something that could be polite and humorous in a family situation and generally recognized in Mandarin, if such a thing exists.

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  • I may need help with proper tagging.
    – uhoh
    Feb 5, 2019 at 10:50
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    哼哼(hēng hēng) ?
    – user4072
    Feb 5, 2019 at 11:18
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    Make it throaty and nasal, of course. :)
    – user4072
    Feb 5, 2019 at 11:23
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    Though people say 狗年旺旺 in the year of dog, they generally do not have similar expressions for other zodiac years. It just happens that the sound a dog makes is similar to a good character 旺。
    – zyy
    Feb 5, 2019 at 20:04
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    @songyuanyao Let's convert these comments to an answer.
    – Mou某
    Feb 6, 2019 at 9:27

2 Answers 2

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Well, the porcine vocabulary comprises at least 3 sounds. How one may represent them is a matter of choice. To date, no exhaustive linguistic studies, to my knowledge, exist. 'oink' is phonetically interesting, because the sound is produced by inhaling. To mimic the 嗷嗷 grunt adequately, one should also inhale.

grunt: 嗷嗷,呼噜噜
squeal: 吱儿吱儿
oink(somewhere between grunt and squeal): 哼哼, 耶耶

当然,不同地方的猪叫声是不一样的, 因为各个地方的方言不一样。
东北的猪叫声听起来和广东的不一样。

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  • Thank you for this concise yet comprehensive, and well-sourced answer!
    – uhoh
    Feb 7, 2019 at 3:17
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The sound produced by pigs breathing can be represented by the character「豷」. This is, however, a very uncommon character, and unlikely to be understood.

《說文》:「豷」,豕息也。从豕壹聲。《春秋傳》曰:“生敖及豷。”(許利切)

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