The Mandarin or Putonghua word for rat which also means rodent or mouse is shu (tone 3). Mixed with other words it can indicate a shade of gray and be part of the name of a small mammal like a marmoset or weasel like Chinese Japanese Korean or Vietnamese since all these langauges have loan words from Chinese.

Please note since there are several systems for writing Sinitic sounds in English I have recorded alternate forms.

Other Chinese and Asian langauges or dialects:

*Tang (Ancient Chinese) *shiu

Cantonese syu or shue

Wu tshu

Hakka cu su or chu tone 3

Hokkien Amoy from the Min group chhu/ chhi /

Japanese: SHO So nezumi

Korean SE Chwi Chui Saengjwi

Vietnamese Thu chuot

Indonesian tikus besar the big mouse

European languages

RAT seems to have been an West Germanic word that spread into Latin judged from its appearance in modern European languages.

Rattus is a POST classical Latin word for Rat

Rat is modern English from Old English Raet.

Modern German has Ratte and Ratze.

The Romans and Greeks used the word Mus to describe rats mice rodents and several other small mammals.

While modern Gaelic uses radan or rodan there seems to have been an older usage of a word meaning grey one, luch(a).

Lithuanian has pele.

I've found a few haiku about Rats.

Where possible I have found and included the romaji.

If anyone knows the romaji for the other poems could you please share it with us?

Bits inside brackets are implied by the text and things probably obvious to a Japanese reader but not so to the rest of us!

Issa wrote

Harusame ya nezumi no nameru sumidagawa

Spring rain! (yet) A rat laps up the Sumida river.

The verb is nameru which cna have vulgar connotations. The sumidagawa still flows through and around Tokyo.

Buson wrote

Sara o fumu nezumi no oto samusa kana

The Dishes walking over the sound of the rat oh the cold!

Guilt or Winter?
For not doing the washing up after a party?

He also wrote another haiku I have not yet found the Japanese text for:

Light winter rain like scampering rats' feet over my koto

Basho wrote this haiku which I also need the Japanese text for:

Quenching its thirst with bitter ice a rat.

Denpuku wrote :

Driving away a rodent the camellia by my pillow.

Nezumi ou ya! Tsubaki iketaru makurakami.

Ichuu wrote

Thunder's roar! The rats rumble (in the roof) (disturbing my ) Summer Sleep!

Be they rodents squirrels or possums animals in the roof can make a lot of noise!