ESL Blogs

I have always been interested if our pets understand what we say or they just react to the intonation, if they distinguish one language from another.  As our family is multilingual (I, together with my wife can speak 5 different languages) and our pats were raised in different countries, it has been quite easy to find it out.

Dogs are considered to react to our speech more consciously than cats. So, we started our experiments with Jenny. She is American born and has always heard only English. She is a very obedient dog and when I call her, she rushes to me like a shot ready to make me go to grass!

But I usually command in English: “Come here!” and her reaction is always the same: ”Coming!” Well, as I have been learning Russian for about a year, I decided to practice in different commands with Jenny one day. We went out and I called her in Russian with the same intonation as usual and for you to know my Russian sounds with a strong English accent. You won’t believe!

She reacted to my voice and turned to me, but stood stock-still giving me a puzzled look: “Daddy, what do you mean? What shall I do?” It started getting interesting! I said the same in French. There was no reaction and she was still puzzled what to do! I called her in Spanish, but she didn’t move again and even stopped wagging her tail! Poor Jenny! She knew she had to do something but she had no idea what! She was looking at me in such despair that I couldn’t stand and stuck to English: “Come here!” and you should have seen her reaction!

“Daddy, I am coming! At last, I know what to do!!!!!” she was so happy to understand! She ran up to me at such a speed that she knocked me down and started licking my face being so happy to hear the language she understands! If she could speak, she would have told me how grateful she was!

Well, now about our parrot who can speak! Rocky is obviously “American” despite being an Australian rose cockatoo. Tanya bought him when he was already adult and very talkative! Hahaha! She tried to teach him Russian! LOL! Any time she spoke Russian to him, he said, “What a crap!” and flew away if she even proposed him his favorite nuts! But he is very smart and I taught him to say “English only!” Now, if we start speaking Russian when Tanya teaches me or I speak French to some of my colleagues from Paris, Rocky gets very aggressive and starts running on “English only! English only!”

To be fair, I have to add a few words about our cats.  Mary and Kuzya were born and raised in Ukraine. They had been used to hearing the Russian language only until they came to the USA. At first, they didn’t react to English at all as if they had been deaf. They didn’t even react hearing their names although they knew me and were very friendly! They slept on Tanya’s side of the bed and they “talked” Russian there. But later on, Mary turned out to enjoy country music and when I start singing she always comes up and starts rubbing against my legs or shoulders if I sit and sometimes she even asks me to take a guitar and to sing!

So, to make some conclusions, I will say that our pets “understand” languages and it is not that difficult for them to learn others!