Could Onomatopoeia Be the Origin of Language?

Bababadalgharaghtakamminarronnkonnbronntonnerronntuo nnthunntrovarrhounawnskawntoohoohoordenenthurnuk! grumbles the thunder in Finnegans Wake, and there is, as far as I know, no longer example in English of onomatopoeia, or echo-mimesis, in which the sound of a word is intended to recreate the phenomenon to which it refers. The first of 10 100-letter thunder-words in James Joyce’s novel, it is also a miniature map of humanity because, after the initial stuttering Babel of “bababad,” it is made from words for thunder in Arabic, Hindi, Japanese, Italian, Irish, and other languages.

Scholars point to tragic and serious allusions in this rattlebag of a word. It represents, and civilization. But there is no doubt that comedy was part of Joyce’s intent too. For him, the noise accompanying the Fall of our first parents could also be the unheard noise of a pratfall, as when Joyce’s contemporary Buster Keaton walks to the end of a plank projecting from the roof of a building with the intent of jumping to the next, but instead falls down through a series of awnings, grabbing a drainpipe which pivots around and sends him shooting through a room on the floor below, where he slides down a fireman’s pole only to be carried away on a truck.