Onomatopoeia (err, sp?)

["la_okus" <xeubie@hotmail.com>]

Buzz, moo, hiss, swish. Higgledy-piggledy, topsy-turvy, hunky-
dory. Flim-flam, flip-flop, airy-fairy. Fiddle-faddle, splish-splash, 
dilly-dally. Onomatopoeia are a somewhat ill-defined category of 
words meant to mimic the sound of what they describe. While 
some behave themselves, others have become full-blown 
nouns and verbs, ready to appear anywhere in the sentence. 
"MOO, Said the cow." "He knocked the 3-pointer with a 
SWOOSH." "The rain PLOPPED onto the CUCKOO."

Every language has different onomato's, which sometimes 
overlap: spanish cats say "miau" and sneeze with an "achis". 
Some languages, Japanese in particular, contain huge libraries 
of them that drive deep into the language and even have sounds 
for feelings. Japanese people go uki-uki when they're happy, 
and their flickering lights go chika-chika, also used to describe 
eye sore from too much TV or computer (that one applies to me, 
typing this at 2AM).

The Japanese separate onomatopoeia into three groups: 
sounds of nature (gero-gero = ribbit), states of the external world 
(gocha-gocha = state of disorder), and conditions of the mind 
(ira-ira = frustration). How much do attitudinals overlap with this 
system? How could some of these sounds be integrated 
unambiguously into lojban grammar? Any other comments?

mu'omi'e .oink.

Compiled list of of J-slang:
http://www.geocities.com/thduggie/japan/jslang.htm