dogs and linguistics

[Alex Franke]

I'm curious about this and I bet someone here knows the answer:

I've read that many languages have sounds that speakers of other languages cannot differentiate among. (I have a friend from India whose sister's name sounds exactly like hers, but they are in fact very different.) I've read that we start (in the womb) with the ability he hear ALL sounds and our brains just learn to ignore the sounds that wo don't normally hear.

So what happens if you take an English speaking dog (English hearing, that is), and train them in Hindi? Like if there's a language where "fetch" and "sit" sound exactly the same to native English speakers, can a dog still hear the difference?

[cabinetman]

Alex

Absolutely, a dog can tell the difference. It's not what the dog ignores, but rather what the dog recognizes and responds to accordingly.
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[Russianwolf]

I think what you are talking about are "Tonal" languages. Where the difference in the words is the intonation you put on it.

I don't think it's that english speakers don't HEAR the difference, just that they are discounting the difference as unimportant. We've been trained that intonation doesn't change the meaning of the word. To us changing the tone, Is like typing a word in BOLD.

Now, other languages the moving the stress from one vowel to another can change the meaning of the word and others, just changing the tone can change the meaning. It takes a bit of time for english speakers to pick up on this but it not that hard to do.

As far as can a dog do it? yep. case in point: If I say down one way, they know it means to get down off the couch, if I say it in a slightly different they know that I wan't them to lay down on the couch. In both cases I only say one word. Down.

[tedkitch]

I speak Spanish (wife is from Uruguay) and I can comment on the dog part. While I still lived there, I trained our Aunt's dog to do all kinds of tricks in English and Spanish and when they would try to say certain things in English (with their accent), the dog was confused at first, but quickly learned to differentiate that the two things that she was hearing were in fact the same command. To this day, I can give the dog a command over the phone and she will do it. They always laugh when we do this.

The tonal part is very true. Something in Spanish as simple as potato, which is papa, also means Dad is said with the accent on the second syllable instead of the first. There are so many inflections and other aspects to other languages that make it interesting

[Hellrazor]

I
So what happens if you take an English speaking dog (English hearing, that is), and train them in Hindi? Like if there's a language where "fetch" and "sit" sound exactly the same to native English speakers, can a dog still hear the difference?

My dog would ask for your green card and then call the INS..

[ironhat]

My son-in-law spent 2 years in Thailand and said that you learned very quickly about correct emphasis placement. Many words had more than 2 meanings depaending on where you placed the accent. Also interesting, although OT, the worst thing you could call someone in that culture was a 'water monitor' (lizard) which had all the implications of our worst "F"-bomb.
Later,
Chiz

[L. D. Jeffries]

News item on the "Today" show. People got a dog from the shelter that would not respond to any English commands. Found out later that the dog was from Quebec!. Tried commands in French and dog responded just fine. Now they are "teaching" him English!!