Cat sounds as human equivalents

[linguistcat]

This is for a conlang so I figured I'd put this here. But since it is a somewhat silly question, feel free to move it if it seems more appropriate elsewhere.

I'm making a language for creatures based on cats, so I might as well ask others what kinds of sounds they've heard from cats? And what would they use as a close equivalent in the IPA for the sounds? Not so much what sounds their cats seem to differentiate but what sounds do they seem capable of acoustically/as stand ins for human sounds?

It's as much to share fun cat noises as for actual reference for my language.

[Ares Land]

I don't have a very talkative cat. Hopefully there's someone with a talkative breed here.

I got the bored, hungry or indignant meow, which I'd say is a sort of [ãõ] with rising pitch.

That sound they make when they see birds. Sort of a [ʔə̃ʔə̃ʔə̃]

Not sure what to make of a purr. If I had to pick an IPA representation, I'd use [ʢʢʢ...]

[linguistcat]

I don't have a very talkative cat. Hopefully there's someone with a talkative breed here.

I got the bored, hungry or indignant meow, which I'd say is a sort of [ãõ] with rising pitch.

That sound they make when they see birds. Sort of a [ʔə̃ʔə̃ʔə̃]

Not sure what to make of a purr. If I had to pick an IPA representation, I'd use [ʢʢʢ...]

I've also heard these, as well as trills cats sometimes make (maybe something rhotic? something in the [r]~[R] range?). So we have tone changes, at least two vowels, and a lot of back consonants. Nasalization or something that's acoustically similar is common (makes sense that human languages tend to have nasals in their cat onomatopoeias). They might have approximates but those could be consider very high, very short high vowels. If I include hissing as a type of phonation, that could also bring in fricatives and maybe affricates.

I think cats, even intelligent ones, would have a hard time with stops further up than about /k/ but if anyone has experience otherwise, I'd love to hear it! Then again, I also had a cat that "said" something close enough to "I understand" one time that I and my parents all agree we heard that. So I might allow stops further forward just because of that.

[Nila_MadhaVa]

For what its worth, I have the following for my own (still a work in progress) cat language:

m ŋ ɴ <m ng nq>
ʔ <’>
bʷ gʷ ɢʷ <b g q> (?? no labialization – Cw clusters instead ??)
ᵐbʷ ᵑgʷ ᶰɢʷ <mb ngg nqq> (?? no labialization – Cw clusters instead ??)
x χ <h x>
ɣ ʁ <gh qh>
ɹ j w <r y w>
r ʀ <rr?/d? rh>

i æ ä o u

[linguistcat]

For what its worth, I have the following for my own (still a work in progress) cat language:

m ŋ ɴ <m ng nq>
ʔ <’>
bʷ gʷ ɢʷ <b g q> (?? no labialization – Cw clusters instead ??)
ᵐbʷ ᵑgʷ ᶰɢʷ <mb ngg nqq> (?? no labialization – Cw clusters instead ??)
x χ <h x>
ɣ ʁ <gh qh>
ɹ j w <r y w>
r ʀ <rr?/d? rh>

i æ ä o u

Very cool phonology. I was considering also using prenasal stops as well even before making this thread. They add a nice touch and are definitely very cat-like.

[Nila_MadhaVa]

Very cool phonology. I was considering also using prenasal stops as well even before making this thread. They add a nice touch and are definitely very cat-like.

Thanks. Yeah, I've definitely heard cats make a /ᵐbɹæ:w/ like sound, so I went with it.

[2+3 Clusivity]

Probably need something like

/ʔ/
/ɬ, ç, x, χ, ħ, h/(with voiced ingressive and voiceless eggressive variants; eggressives might also contrast aspiration; the velar and uvulars might contrast fricatives versus affricates)
/ʀ̥, ʜ, a/ (voicing contrast as above; probably all ~vocoids can take breathiness, creakiness, or harshness as a secondary factor in addition to the aforementioned ingressive versus eggressive paired series. I.e., you could have a in harsh voiced ingressive or a voiceless eggressive with creak)

Tone-shit everywhere.

Secondary articulations with closed mouth possible on most things. Syllable structure is basically anything: CV, V, C, CC, etc.

Apparently, per wiki, felines are divided between those that can meow (or was it purr?) and roar. Not sure how that fits in at all.

[linguistcat]

...
Apparently, per wiki, felines are divided between those that can meow (or was it purr?) and roar. Not sure how that fits in at all.

"Small" cats are capable of purring but not roaring, while "large" cats can roar but don't purr. Some of the latter do something called chuffing, which sounds a little similar to purring, but is produced differently. I put small and large there in quotes because while as a group the "large cats are indeed far larger, the smallest of the "large" cats IS smaller than than the largest of the "small" cats. In any case, house cats are squarely in the small cat side of things, but if someone is using larger cats as a base, it's good to know.

I'll comment on the actual phonology probably in the morning. Today has been a day for me but I can always offer cat facts.

[linguistcat]

Probably need something like

/ʔ/
/ɬ, ç, x, χ, ħ, h/(with voiced ingressive and voiceless eggressive variants; eggressives might also contrast aspiration; the velar and uvulars might contrast fricatives versus affricates)
/ʀ̥, ʜ, a/ (voicing contrast as above; probably all ~vocoids can take breathiness, creakiness, or harshness as a secondary factor in addition to the aforementioned ingressive versus eggressive paired series. I.e., you could have a in harsh voiced ingressive or a voiceless eggressive with creak)

Tone-shit everywhere.

Secondary articulations with closed mouth possible on most things. Syllable structure is basically anything: CV, V, C, CC, etc.

So from this, the furthest forward POA is alveolar but that IS also lateral. (I do like [ɬ] as a rendering for certain cat sounds.) Although most sounds can also have closed mouth secondary which I'm assuming overlaps a lot with what we might count as nasalization, and possibly "labialized" offglide when transitioning from a closed to open mouth articulation.

I'm not sure what you mean by "harshness", but assuming something like ejectives or "injectives" in the case of ingressive sounds.

I'm also assuming /ʀ̥, ʜ, a/ are the vowels of this inventory, which gives an interesting feel.