I HATE how some animal sounds are spelled in English.
Okay, now let me preface this by saying some words are... Fine. Roar makes sense, baa makes sense, neigh makes so much sense.
It's just that... There are a FEW words that really grind my gears. I can name 3.
"meow" - I hate this one SO much. I can get why it's spelled that, "me-" is like the word "me" and "-ow" is like the interjection "ow", so /mi/ and /aʊ/ make /miaʊ/, which is what a cat usually says... But WHY DON'T YOU SPELL IT "miau" INSTEAD?? Why not "mao"?? "meow" looks disgusting!
"bark" - come on, that's not what a dog says! Not even close! Why do we need "b" and "k" in the word?? I can understand "-ar-", but in that case, the word should've been only "ar"! no not "arf" I hate that too I prefer it without the "f". I'd tolerate even an "ourgh".
"chirp" - no?? Have you heard what a bird sounds like? They don't say /ɚ/ ("-ir-")! Come on, use /i/ ("-ee-") instead! At least THAT makes more sense! I can see "p" being there, but I can't make sense of "ch". what I mostly hear from a bird is "teep". Maybe "twit", maybe "tit". Even maybe a "tweet". But "chirp"??? Not even close.
each person who relied on their hearing to conceive of an onomatopoeic word for these 3 sounds shouldn't have relied on their hearing to conceive of an onomatopoeic word for said sound.