【英语语言学习】狗狗其实比你想象中厉害

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SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

There are enormous implications in a report this week from a team of Hungarian scientists who say that dogs can understand words, not just the tone in which we may tell them, oh, good boy, good little girl. Scientists at Eotvos Lorand University in Budapest wrote in the Science journal that the 13 family dogs they studied used the same parts of their brain as humans to process language. They probably understand words.

Now, this is just not a cute little pet story. It might lead to rethinking the whole relationship we have with the dogs in our lives. It means we should no longer speak doggie baby talk, like otay snookie-woofums time for a walkie-poo. Instead, people will have to tell their dogs, good morning. In a moment, I'll take you outside to evacuate¹ your bowels² and bladder. In the meantime, I've left food with beef, rice and shards³ of carrots in your bowl that contains about 800 calories, zinc⁴, sulfate, vitamin E supplement, sodium⁵ selenite and 1.5 crude fiber⁶. I've put The Times op-ed page next to your bowl. I think you'll love Frank Bruni, but there's a column next to it you might want to poop on.

This research means we should probably speak in soft tones when talking near our dogs about delicate topics like spaying and neutering. Perhaps it's just wisest to whisper, you know, I think we have to take Olly in for that thing the vet⁷ does, you know. This finding that dogs understand words means that if you leave Morning Edition on for your dog while you go off to work, by the time you come home, your dog will be better informed than you. Imagine living with a smart-aleck dog who can correct you about the fine points of the Trans-Pacific Partnership⁸ trade deal or gets the answers to the weekend Sunday puzzle before you do.

Instead of leaving on music - light jazz or Vivaldi - as company for your dog when you go out at night, your dog might prefer to listen to an audiobook of Noam Chomsky reading "Profit Over People: Neoliberalism & Global Order." And if dogs understand language, how can we look into their soft, limpid⁹ eyes and woolly snouts to confide¹⁰ our deepest anxieties and darkest secrets if we know our dogs take in each and every word and just think I'd rather scratch myself than hear all this again?

(SOUNDBITE OF THE SINGING DOGS & DON CHARLES' "HOT DOG ROCK AND ROLL")

SIMON: Do we know the names of the singers? You're listening to NPR News.

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