Countries of Origin and Sneeze Sounds

[Geminerdi]

I've heard conflicting reports on this one -- some people claim that people from different countries tend to sneeze with different sounds resembling their language's onomatopoeia for sneezing (ex., the French, who spell sneezes as atchoum, supposedly tend to have more of an -m sound at the end than the English with their atchoo do) whereas other people say there's no difference. Obviously something like this isn't going to be 100% across the board, but I still find the concept interesting. 

Better-traveled members of the forum, do any of you know if is this something confined to writing? Or are people's sneeze-sounds actually somewhat molded by their language's onomatopoeia?

(If you didn't memorize the sneeze onomatopoeia for a certain country, Google has a surprising number of infographics covering the topic. Just sayin'. 😉 )

[gryffin]

In part, yes! Italian has two onomatopoeeas for sneezing: ecciù (etciù) and eccì (etcì), with different sounds at the end, equivalent to English oo and ee respectively. I believe the former is the more common nowadays, the other more old-fashioned. Anyway, you definitely hear some people sneezing with the oo sound at the end and some with ee (and of course some with more ‘neutral’ sneezes that don’t sound like either of those). So there must be a degree of that. I don’t know enough Germans to check whether they sneeze with an ee at the end, alas!

[MeForever]

I think so to, partly. In Dutch a sneeze is usually spelled as hatchoe (Side note, my skin is crawling just writing that because it feels so wrong lol) and I have heard people sneeze that way. I can at least remember one Dutch youtuber sneezing exactly that way, and maybe a few people irl. So yeah, partly in my opinion!

[Anyone]

I think that if there are regional differences in sneeze sounds it would probably not be because of that country’s phonetic interpretation of sneezes. (If anything those onomatopoeias are probably shaped by the actual sneeze sounds.) It would most likely be the different general pronunciation in different languages. Different languages cause you to use your vocal chords differently. Some sounds come very easily to native speakers of some languages, but are totally unpronounceable to others. So the sounds your vocal chords have developed to make  could cause your sneeze to sound a certain way. Various cultural practices and norms could also influence how people sneeze. 

[atchoum]

On 1/21/2019 at 6:08 AM, Geminerdi said:

 the French, who spell sneezes as atchoum, supposedly tend to have more of an -m sound at the end than the English with their atchoo do😉

My theory for the atchoum is that children are taught not to sneeze openly, but to stifle their sneezes in public, so the -m on the end is when they sneeze openly and only remember to close their mouth when it's too late, thus the -m of the lips shutting.   But you are right, atchoum is the accepted  prototype representation of a sneeze in French, and sometimes people will actually tack an -m at the end of a spontaneous sneeze just for fun.  And children tend to say atchoumer rather than éternuer.

[medstudent]

In Japanese, sneezes are "Kushami" -- I suppose I can see how that spelling is similar to what a sneeze sounds like, but maybe taking a few liberties haha

[doggo]

52 minutes ago, medstudent said:

In Japanese, sneezes are "Kushami" -- I suppose I can see how that spelling is similar to what a sneeze sounds like, but maybe taking a few liberties haha

I actually remember hearing one that was so close to this. It was a really loud sneeze (and in a silent library ) that bent him down from waist and kinda throaty too. A cold sneeze at it's finest. But it sounded also really funny to me because I could so totally head the word there Well he was a funny dude, perhaps he was making a joke of it. It was the only time I head him sneeze so I couldn't tell if it sounded always like that.