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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
Joined: Jan 2001
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When a person in the US sustains a painful but not excruciating injury, he is likely to verbalize his distress with "ouch!" or "ow." These utterances don't strike me as especially onomatopoeic, so I surmise that other dialects and languages have different but comparable expressions. What is your equivalent of "ouch" ?
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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TEd
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old hand
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old hand
Joined: Jan 2001
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English-speaking Canadians also say "ouch" but usually with the Canadian pronunciation of the "ou". In Italian, it's something like "EYE-ya" (phonetically). There is actually a web page on this: http://www.diseaseworld.com/ouch/ouch.htm It includes sounds, too. (Your post is a bit serendipitous - I just found this the other day!)
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addict
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addict
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When I've seen this in Spanish and Italian, it's usually something like "Aii!" (pronounced like "eye"). Oddly enough, when I lived in Italy, Spain and Colombia, I found that the more the local language dominated my mental space, the more likely I was to say "Ai" rather than "Ouch."
So perhaps it's not onomatopoeic, but simply relates to the sounds a language has easily available to it - ouch would be a bit difficult to spell in Spanish (perhaps "auch," but Spanish words never end that way), and very difficult to do in Italian (couldn't even guess - Bean, emanuela, anyone?).
And what would be an onomatopoeic interjection in this case? It would have to depend on the injury, I suppose...
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Joined: Jan 2001
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old hand
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old hand
Joined: Jan 2001
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very difficult to do in ItalianI'm not sure you could spell it in Italian, because the only way to spell our "ch" sound is to follow a c with either an e or an i. And then there's the words-almost-always-end-in-a-vowel-sound rule. So the letter following the "c" which makes it say "ch" must be pronounced, as well. So you'd get something like "auci" ("Ouch-ee"). 
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Yep, Hyla, "ai!" in Portuguese too.
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enthusiast
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enthusiast
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ditto for French (but I believe it is spelled aie)
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Always liked the French cry "M'aidez! M'aidez!" ("Help me! Help me!")
which the English-speaking world adapted corruptedto "Mayday! Mayday!"
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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¡Ay! ¡Ayayay! ¡Ay de mí! ¡Ay mamá! ¡Ay Diós! ¡Ay Diosito! ¡Ay Diosito santo! ¡Hijo! ¡Híjole! ¡Hijo de la! ¡Hijo de la fregada! Close your eyes, Jackie, blue smoke coming out of this one! ¡Hijo de la chingada! ¡Ya basta! 
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addict
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addict
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What is your equivalent of "ouch" ?
Based on what I see of sporting activity on TV, I'd say in Oz it's pretty consistently "Oh F*ck!"
Hev
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