the.com/iau
the sound a cat makes when it's technically asking, but really telling.
means iau is the romanian word for 'meow,' the onomatopoeic sound representing a cat's vocalization.
from like most animal-sound words, iau is pure onomatopoeia — romanian ears heard the cat's cry and spelled it phonetically, landing on this three-letter vowel cluster instead of english's 'meow' or japanese's 'nyaa.'
pronunciationsounds roughly like 'yow,' not 'eye-ow'
cross-language catsevery language hears the same cat differently
also a nameiau overlaps with unrelated acronyms and place names