bullukuku

Pronunciation[buʎukuku]
DefinitionSound of the bullukuku hawk communicating with humans
Sensory ModalityCognition
SOUND
Paralinguistic
Description
Uttered with intonation that is higher than surrounding utterance. Final ku is repeated and lengthened: bullukuku kuu kuu kuu kuu . . .  which is followed by a linguistic utterance that either 'translates' the bird's message into a human utterance, or conveys a human response to the bird's message. Interestingly, the human response mimics the intonation of the bird's call.
Transcriptionbuʎukuku~kuu~kuu~kuu~kuu; tɕaɾa mana puɲunʥu tɕaɾa mana puɲunʥu
Translation(It said)bullukuku~kuu~kuu~kuu~kuu, (which meant 'are they yet asleep?') (and then the children answered) ‘they are not yet asleep; they are not yet asleep’.
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Commentary

Video 1: Luisa Cadena tells Janis Nuckolls and Alex Rice a traditional story about a hawk that saves starving orphans from cruel adults. In this fragment, the hawk is asking the children if the adults are asleep by calling out to them with its signature sound. The children then respond that the adults are not yet asleep.

Nuckolls, Janis. 2024. bullukuku. The Quechua Ideophonic Dictionary. Online: https://quechuarealwords.byu.edu/?ideophone=bulyukuku.

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