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Humor
My Multilingual Dog
It’s not just the tone of your voice, capisce?
I’m surprised that so many folks still don’t get it. Dogs are intelligent. A study in 2009 concluded that dogs compare to human children of 2 to 2.5 years of age in intelligence. (In my humble opinion, dogs are smarter than most adults, but I can only offer anecdotal proof to back up that view.)
Of course, if we consider emotional intelligence (EI), dogs leave humans trailing in the dust. But that’s another story.
You may remember Dr. Pilley’s stories of Chaser, “the smartest dog in the world.” Dr. Pilley scientifically proved that Chaser understood over 1000 proper nouns, and further understood categories. So, Chaser could pick out a “ball”, knew that ball fit into the category “toy”, and could further differentiate “ball” by adjectives such as “red,” “soft,” “squeaky,” and so on.
You can watch Dr. Pilley and Chaser’s You Tube videos here.
But, this story is about my little genius, Rosie. Yes, that’s her photo, above. I speak to Rosie mostly in English, and her Daddy speaks to her in Spanish, Puerto Rican style (that’s rapid-speed Spanish with lots of elision).
But even though Mama speaks Castilian Spanish (poorly) and Daddy speaks Puerto Rican Spanish, Rosie…
