interspecies linguistics &c

[kellan_the_tabby]

or, a comment I posted over at Ysabet's & decided to share here, as well, because it made me giggle

I was raised by the husky as much as by my parents, & grew up speaking Dog about as well as English. I slowly learned Housecat as a second language starting in my 20s.

Jasper has had dogs as a special interest basically his whole life, & also spent a lot of time with the local cat colony, so he speaks both Dog & Feral Cat as second languages. (English is also a second language for him; his first is ASL.)

Loiosh (the orange tabby) lived with a couple of Great Pyrenees, & their humans, who are also basically Great Pyrenees, for a couple of weeks after he was orphaned. So his first language was Dog, & that was a lot of how we communicated for a couple years. We've been kinda learning Housecat together. I've learned a lot more of it than he has.

Major Tom (the big grey tabby) was feral before he decided I didn't suck too much. I've learned a lot of Feral Cat from him, & he's learned a lot of Housecat from me. He finds Loiosh to be WEIRD AS HELL but will, sometimes, help him with Cat. He CLAIMS that he won't learn Dog as a matter of principle, & he doesn't SPEAK Dog that I've seen, but he absolutely UNDERSTANDS a fair amount of it.

Remy (the LARGE black dog) is Jasper's but was raised by all of us. So he has Dog as a first language, but started picking up Housecat & Feral Cat at eight weeks. Watching an eighty pound dog assume the meatloaf position, complete with neatly-tucked front paws, is an EXPERIENCE. He's very bad at meowing, but that doesn't stop him from trying.

It's an entire-ass menagerie around here, is what.

Comments

[morgynleri]

I speak English as my first language, junkyard dog as a second (which is not actually quite the same as pet dog, though they are related dialects), and half-feral housecat as a third. German is a distant fourth, I've got the grammer vaguely okay, my vocabulary is shite.

[alatefeline]

<3

[kellan_the_tabby]

<333 !! :) :)

[siliconshaman]

I claim Housecat as my first language and feral cat as my second, my speech centres are pre-programmed for Norse thanks to some ancestral genes and the only human language I speak is English, which is Third or forth by a long way... and on top of that I'm dyslexic so that neat left-right hemisphere thing the brain does in most people is all muddled up in me so my language centre is on the wrong side to my motor control and the signals don't always get through...

Although I can curse fluently in about a dozen different languages on occasion.

[kellan_the_tabby]

man, brains are WEIRD, huh

[siliconshaman]

if they were simple enough to understand easily, we'd be too simple to do it.

[kellan_the_tabby]

... to our sorrow. or possibly annoyance.

[danabren]

Y'all got a heckin' polycule over there is all I am saying :D :D :D

[kellan_the_tabby]

you're not wrong!

[cellio]

Watching an eighty pound dog assume the meatloaf position, complete with neatly-tucked front paws, is an EXPERIENCE. He's very bad at meowing, but that doesn't stop him from trying.

Oh my. That must be hilarious!

[kellan_the_tabby]

I have yet to get a good picture of it, to my regret, but I'm gonna keep trying!

[mama_kestrel]

I love it! I'm fluent in cat (both house and feral), but speak very little dog. I am reliably informed that husky is a distinct dialect.

[kellan_the_tabby]

It's true; huskies are appalling creatures, so it only follows. I love them dearly, & if my life had turned in a different direction, I might have a couple, but in this life? I've already got a Loiosh; adding a husky would be EXTREMELY too much.

[chanter1944]

Your fuzzy crew are adorable and charming as ever. <3 I'm fluent in English, working on Spanish, I keep picking up snippets from other human languages because I am a nerd and a half, and I got what amounted to a crash course in Labrador at seventeen, minus purely visual cues, that led to being pretty fluent in friendly goofball puppydog. I'm inclined to say retrievers have their own distinct dialect among canines! My understanding of house cat is very patchy, because again, missing visual cues, and when kitties are afoot, the visuals are vital.

Now you've got me wondering. Mr. Loiosh Orangekitty Tabby over there having been raised by dogs... does he wag in canine fashion, separate from the irritated or about-to-BOIIIING! pounce feline tail swish?

[kellan_the_tabby]

He does not, alas, wag, though I've known kittens raised by dogs who do. The main really visible thing is the way he approaches other cats -- he gets too close WAY too fast, & then he generally gets punched in the face. The other bits are fairly subtle, but so much visual language is -- Ive learned a lot of it when Jasper's pointed it out, & he's much better at seeing it than most humans, probably because sign IS his first language.