What are ideophones?

homepagegifQuechua Real Words is a site dedicated to an appreciation and study of real words that, by their nature, are difficult to define within a traditional dictionary format. Such words, called ‘ideophones’, ‘mimetics’, ‘expressives’, and ‘onomatopoeias’ by linguists, present many problems for analysis because of their melodic and gestural dimensions. They are not designed to be abstracted onto a 2 dimensional page and are therefore presented here with audiovisual clips of their use.

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