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From: Hibou <vpaereru-unmonitored@yahoo.com.invalid>
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Subject: Re: 7 Words That Dogs Can Understand (And 4 That No Dog Can)
Date: Thu, 6 Mar 2025 06:46:28 +0000
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Le 02/03/2025 à 18:16, Judith Latham a écrit :
>
> A dog can understand 7 words. How many barks does a human understand?
> I'll bet it's less than 7. [...]

It all depends on the meaning of 'to understand'. Words are not simple 
things to us. They have denotations and connotations, may conjure up 
memories, chunks of knowledge and history (moon, Nazi, empire, 
slavery...). They have spellings and pronunciations, declensions and 
conjugations, may belong to certain registers and dialects.... Humans 
know this. We use our languages with a wealth of understanding.

Dogs don't. They simply don't have the mental apparatus for it. When 
they recognise and respond to 'sit', 'fetch', or 'wait', it's more like 
a human responding to a kettle clicking off when it's finished boiling.

What's really astonishing is that we do have the apparatus. Humans are 
extraordinary beings, the product of long and tortuous evolution that 
may have few parallels in in the Universe. I find this a sobering thought.