What Is Onomatopoeia in Japanese? If you’ve started learning Japanese, you might have noticed words that “sound” like the feeling they describe — words such as dokidoki , kirakira , or wanwan . These are called onomatopoeia  (オノマトペ), and they’re everywhere in daily Japanese! Unlike English, which uses sound words mostly for noises (like buzz  or bang ), Japanese onomatopoeia covers a much wider range — sounds, feelings, actions, even silence. That’s why they’re often called “