Learn English – an onomatopoeia for heavy breathing

Words whose sounds refer to, suggest, or otherwise are associated with a particular meaning are cases of sound symbolism. Although onomatopoeia - direct imitation of a real-world sound - is one type of sound symbolism, it is not the only one.

A common sound symbolism is sound iconism. With the related clustering, this is the re-use of sounds across a set of words with related meanings. Note that this is the re-use of sounds, not morphemes. One example is found in the set of words stamp, stomp, tamp, tromp, and tramp which have the common /-mp/. The final /-mp/ sound is strongly suggestive of stomping or stamping, though it's actually not imitative of it.

Another set of words is glisten, gleam, glint, glare, glam, glimmer, glaze, glass, glitz, gloss, glory, glow, and glitter. The /gl-/ is associated with shining, though it's not imitative in any way since shining is visual, not auditory. Nevertheless English speakers hear these words as related.

This is not unique to English of course. For example, in Japanese linguistics one finds the terms phenomime and psychomime for similar phenomena.

Short answer: No - hence the joke.

You can make one up that matches the sound they actually make or use the word "Bark"

Longer answer:

Here are more examples of fox sounds from http://greenmeditations.com/getting-foxy

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6NuhlibHsM

• Alarm bark
• Vixen's scream
• Gekkering
• Howl

Literature seems to favour bark

I heard the foxes as they ranged over the snow crust, in moonlight nights, in search of a partridge or other game, barking like forest dogs... _Thoreau

At night when I slept under an oak tree in the yard, when the white clouds scudded across a blue night sky of spring — it was then I heard the foxes bark on the high mountain top. They barked for me. _{Jesse Stuart}

I heard the foxes howling near the house these two nights back. They always herald a death in our family. _{Sean O'Callaghan}

I heard the fox kit begin to vocalize in a high-pitched, laughing yodel. _{John Ulanich}