nature
animal sounds
שואג · נוהם · יהגה · נוער · שוקק · נוהק
Bottom line
Biblical Hebrew assigns each animal its own verb, exactly as English does not let a cow bark. The article's frame is onomatopoeia: it holds that in all languages the words for animal sounds seem to derive from the sounds themselves, and that societies hear those sounds differently, which is why an American child says a rooster crows "cock-a-doodle-do" and an Israeli child "koo-koo-ri-koo", and why a dog goes "bow-wow" in one place and "hav-hav" in another. A lion has four verbs: shoeg is roars (hunger, dominance), nohem is growls (satisfaction turned wild), yehegeh is moans (steady and sustained, also said of a dove), and noer is a sudden roar let out by a cub. A bear is shokek, a wild donkey nohek (brays), a cow goeh (bellows), a horse tzohel (neighs), a bird mitzaftzef (chirps), a dog novayach (barks). Do not render all four lion verbs "roar" in a passage that lists them; the point of the list is that they differ.
At a glance
| Hebrew | translit | English | what sets it apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| שואג | shoeg | roars | the hungry lion frightening its prey (Vilna Gaon); an involuntary outburst, from ש-ג "inadvertent" (Pappenheim) |
| נוהם | nohem | growls | the sated lion gone berserk with plenty (Rashi); storminess vented deliberately (Pappenheim) |
| יהגה | yehegeh | moans | shared by lion and dove (Donash); consistent, sustained sound (Pappenheim) |
| נוער | noer | roars (suddenly) | a lion cub in Tanach, borrowed for a donkey in the Gemara (Sefer HaAruch); "revealing" (Pappenheim) |
| שוקק | shokek | roars / saunters | disputed: bear's roar (Vilna Gaon) against bear's gait, from shok (Ibn Janach, Radak) |
| נוהק | nohek | brays | the wild donkey clearing its heart of suffering (Pappenheim) |
Where the authorities disagree
What shokek means. The Vilna Gaon (to Mishlei 28:15) takes it as the bear's roar, tied to shokek in the sense of desire, since a bear is perpetually hungry. Ibn Janach and Radak deny it is a sound at all: it describes the bear's sauntering walk, from shok, the calf of the leg that moves as one walks. Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim sides with sound but by a different route, tracing it to ש-ק, "making consecutive sounds," which also yields teshukah (desire, since in the throes of desire the heartbeat grows noticeably consistent and consecutive) and neshikah (a kiss, either the outward realization of teshukah or because kissing makes a distinct sound) and neshek (a weapon, either because its mechanics make a certain noise or because two combatants approaching each other on the battlefield resemble two lovers approaching for a kiss). The Bottom line keeps "roars," the majority of the three, but a translator working in Mishlei 28:15 should know the gait reading exists.
What separates the lion's four verbs. Rabbi Yechiel Michel Stern, Rav of the Ezras Torah neighborhood in Yerushalayim, suggests that the difference is the reason the lion is making noise, and he brings the Vilna Gaon (shoeg when hungry) and Rashi (to Sanhedrin 102a, Berachos 32a: nohem when it has a lot to eat, so that it becomes especially happy and goes berserk). He does not explain what causes a lion to be yehegeh or noer. Rabbi Pappenheim works instead from the biliteral roots and gets a different grid: shoeg involuntary, nohem deliberate, yehegeh steady, noer sudden. The two are compatible in practice and the entry keeps both, Stern for the cause and Pappenheim for the manner.
Where nohek comes from. Rabbi David Chaim Chelouche (1920-2016), the late Chief Rabbi of Netanya, argues that both nohem and nohek derive from נ-ה, which also gives nehi, the onomatopoeic interjection denoting sighing (Yirmiyahu 9:17-19 and 31:14, Amos 5:16, Michah 2:4). Rabbi Pappenheim instead traces nohek to the one-letter root ק, "expulsion," parent of נ-ק, "cleaning."
Distinctions
The per-animal verbs
Donash Ibn Labrat (920 to 990), answering Menachem Ibn Saruk, was the first to set out the list; Menachem had already touched it at the biliteral root ג-ע. Donash in his poem: a hart is oreg (Tehillim 42:2), a lion nohem (Mishlei 19:12, 28:15), a cow or ox goeh (Shmuel I 6:12, Iyov 6:5), a horse tzohel (Yirmiyahu 5:8), a bird mitzaftzef (Yeshayahu 10:14, 29:4, 38:14). In prose he adds: a lion shoeg (Amos 3:8, Yechezkel 22:25, Tehillim 104:21), a bear shokek (Mishlei 28:15), a wild donkey nohek (Iyov 6:5), a dog novayach (Yeshayahu 56:10), and yehegeh for both lion (Yeshayahu 31:4) and dove (Yeshayahu 59:11). Rashi cites the list, in whole or in part, to Yeshayahu 8:19 and 29:4, Yoel 1:20, Tehillim 42:2, Mishlei 28:15, Iyov 6:5, and Chullin 53a, and adds charatz for a dog's bark (Shemos 11:7).
Rabbi Pappenheim's biliteral roots
Beyond the lion's four, Rabbi Pappenheim traces several of these verbs to their core two-letter roots. Goeh, a cow's moo, comes from ג-ע, exertion to the point of exhaustion, which also gives yagea (tired), yegiyah (toiling) and geviyah (expiration, death), since a cow exerts much effort in letting out those moos. Mitzaftzef, chirping, comes from צ-פ, the root behind mitzapeh and zipui (coating), tzofeh (gaze) and tzipiyah (anticipation), the bird's chirp expressing its anticipation and hope for its mate or its food. Novayach, barking, comes from ב-ח, sound that travels through the air, whose only other derivative is the first word of avchas cherev, the swooshing of a sword (Yechezkel 21:20; the article gives 21:2). For nohem the root is ה-ם, storminess or chaos, which also gives hamon (multitudes, masses joined in a stormy gathering) and tehomos (the depths of the sea, where the deep waters are wild and stormy); a lion's nohem is likewise an outward expression of inner turmoil, though done more deliberately than shoeg.
noer (נוער)
Root נ-ע-ר. In Tanach it appears once, of a lion cub (Yirmiyahu 51:38); in Berachos 3a it is the donkey's bray. Rabbi Nosson of Rome (Sefer HaAruch) resolves this: the verb properly belongs to the cub, and Chazal used it of a donkey in a borrowed sense. Rabbi Pappenheim's ע-ר, "revealing," is the root behind ohr (skin, the visible part of the body), ervah (nakedness), taar (a razor, which reveals the skin), ar (an enemy who reveals his enmity), and eir (awake, when one's powers are suddenly on display).
The Aramaic equivalents
Rashi (to Chullin 53a) gives meuh for Hebrew nohem and mikarkar for goeh; for horses (Chullin 79a, Sotah 42a) he gives tznif against Biblical tzohel, though tznif elsewhere describes a wild chicken (Targum Sheini to Esther 1:2). None of the three appears in Tanach. Separately, tzanif in Biblical Hebrew is a crown (Yeshayahu 62:3, Zechariah 3:5, Iyov 29:14); Rav Hirsch (to Devarim 25:18) links it to zanav, a tail, on the interchange of tzadi with zayin and peh with beis.
behemah (בהמה)
Rabbi Yaakov Tzvi Mecklenburg: the very word for a domestic animal is built on ה-מ(-ה), "incoherent noise," the same root Rabbi Pappenheim reads in nohem. Rabbi Aharon Marcus (1843-1916) similarly reads it as ב-ה-ה, an onomatopoeic rendering of a common animal sound, "baaaa," and links it to the ancient Latin and Old Irish bo(s), the etymon of English bovine, related also to Greek bous and to bol/vol in various Slavic languages. Either way behemah stands against man, called a medaber, a speaker: the animal just makes sounds, man has the unique ability to produce understandable sounds through speech.
Two cautions from the article
Donash also writes in that passage that a rooster (gever) is tzorayach, but that understanding seems to rest on a mistaken reading of Tzefaniah 1:14 and Yeshayahu 42:13, which use tzorayach for the battle cry of a gibbor, a human warrior, not of a gever. And printed editions of Donash read nohem for the wild donkey; that is most likely a scribal error, since nohem never appears of a wild donkey in Tanach while nohek does. Berachos 3a does use nohem of a dove.
Rendering guidance
- Trap: English "roar" will swallow shoeg, nohem, and noer at once. When a passage lists them together, differentiate: "roars," "growls," "lets out a cry."
- Yehegeh is the hardest, since one English word must serve a lion and a dove. "Moans" carries both; "murmurs" fits the dove alone and loses the lion.
- Never translate an animal verb by the animal's English convention when the Hebrew has deliberately borrowed a different animal's verb. Berachos 3a's noer of a donkey is a borrowing (Sefer HaAruch), and flattening it to "brays" erases the point.
- An apocryphal Midrash on the enchanted animals etched into Shlomo HaMelech's throne (cited by the kabbalistic Sodi Razi, Hilchos Kisei, ascribed to Rabbi Elazar Rokeach of Worms, and by Rabbi Avraham ben Shlomo of Yemen to Melachim I 10:18) supplies further verbs, most of them found nowhere in Tanach: a hart tzohel, a tiger tzorayach, a sheep chonev, a wolf zorer or zored, a deer mifaret, a bear migamgem, a donkey or ibex mavrim or mavris, an elephant nohem or tofes, a re'em mitzaltzel, a giraffe milavlev. Treat these as aggadic, not as Biblical usage.
Sources
Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein, "Vayakhel/Pekudei: Animal Sounds," What's in a Word?, Ohr Somayach, 29 Adar 5781 (2021-03-13): raw text in sources/whats-in-a-word/raw/9126-vayakhelpekudei-animal-sounds.md. Primary loci: Donash Ibn Labrat's response to Menachem Ibn Saruk, lines 82 to 83; Machberes Menachem s.v. ג-ע; Rashi to Yeshayahu 8:19 and 29:4, Yoel 1:20, Tehillim 42:2, Mishlei 28:15, Iyov 6:5, Chullin 53a and 79a, Sotah 42a, Sanhedrin 102a, Berachos 32a; Sefer HaAruch s.v. נער; Vilna Gaon to Mishlei 28:15; Rav Hirsch to Devarim 25:18; Berachos 3a; Targum Sheini to Esther 1:2; Tosefta D'Targum to Melachim I 10:20; Yechezkel 21:20 for avchas cherev (the article gives 21:2). Rabbi Aharon Marcus's comparison of behemah to the Latin, Greek, Old Irish and Slavic words for cattle is the article's own and is reported here as it reports it.