Can a dog only understand the language of it's owner when it comes to commands? (French,English.etc)
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jin jang
ANSWERS: 10
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Dogs respond to an owner's tone of voice and hand gestures; not actual words. +5
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Well, yes. Because it has only been taught the language of it's owner, If i told my dog in Russian to "roll over" he wouldnt have a clue what i was on about. That is unless i used signals or body language in cojunction with my verbal command. But if i just used the verbal command in a foreign language he has never heard before, he would not understand. Neither would a human for that matter.
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They, and many other intelligent animals, will respond to the differing intonations and speach codes of our different languages.
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I like the Far Out cartoon and agree with it. Owner: I've had it, Ginger, stay out of the garbage... Dog Ginger: blah,blah,blah,blah,Ginger,blah,blah,blah Cat Ginger: (nothing)
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they will understand what they have been trained to understand....see any training articals on the Iditarod race dogs....it might explain a bit to ya.
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I think the dog will only understand the language that the owner and the other people in the home speak to the dog. if it would be in another language, the tone of voice and body language should be the same, he might react as well.
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No. The tone of voice and the person who is doing the talking is what is important. I once imported a dog from Germany who had been trained only with german speaking owners. When he arrived, I gave the commands in English and he obeyed them. As a test, I also gave the commands in Spanish and he obeyed them as well.
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My dog gets excited when I ask it if it wants go to the pound and get put down or get kicked like a football in an excited tone, and stops playing with his foodbowl if I yell at him in Latin in a stern tone. All animal languages are tones.
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Dogs really don't care about human languages. In that respect, they are like young children. They learn to associate certain sounds with certain meanings, but they don't form words and sentences like we humans do. That said, the same thing said in two different tones of voice can have very different meanings, but they are generally smart enough to know that humans have different voices and know that different people saying "sit" are all making a request for them to plop their furry butts on the floor. (I say "generally" because I have known some rather dim-witted dogs.)
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It appears as though it is the sound a dog associates with the command it performs. For years I wondered why law enforcement agencies sometimes have the officer train the dog in German, Polish, etc. A detective told me that it was so the criminals would not likely know what command the dog was being given when in the field. She also explained, after being in the field 24 years that many short commands repeated in any language would give the same results.
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