Animal Language

 Did you know animals have language? Here are some examples:

Bees communicate the location of good nectar to each other by doing a kind of dance.

Birds use vocal sounds and gestures to communicate with each other. When a bird shakes all over that means, "finish" and many other creatures use that to mean the same thing. It's like shaking water off after getting wet.

Dogs and cats use all sorts of intonation patterns and body language to communicate. Unfortunately some canine and feline gestures have opposite meanings so, unless they were raised together, dogs and cats may not get along. For example, the dog's "Let's play" position is similar to the cat's aggressive threat.

Dogs can learn to count to five, probably because they have four paws and one tail. Once we had a brilliant dalmatian who learned to understand a lot of American Sign Language. I tried to teach her to count by asking how many treats she wanted and holding up a different number of fingers on each hand. I assumed she'd choose the higher number, but she didn't seem to be getting it. Then I realized she always picked the lower number because she wanted the game to continue. She did get it!

I wrote more about animal language and reviewed a book on that topic in a previous blog post. You can see it here:  http://onwordsblog.blogspot.com/2009/12/dog-language.html

Hurt Go Happy

You might think Hurt Go Happy is an odd title for a book, but if you're familiar with American Sign Language it might not seem so strange.

I saw this book, by Ginny Rorby, in a catalog. It's about a Deaf girl who meets an old man raising a baby chimpanzee and teaching it Sign Language. Since I've had lots of experience with Deaf people and once met Koko, the famous gorilla who learned how to sign, I couldn't resist buying the book.

The girl in the story has been forbidden to learn Sign Language by her mother, but starts learning it from the old man and becomes friends with Sukari, the Chimpanzee. But when the old man dies, Sukari is shipped off to a horrible research facility where she and many other animals are treated cruelly.

Is there any way a young girl who can't hear can find a way to save the animal she loves?

Some of the realistic descriptions of the research facility are disturbing but I recommend this book anyway because it's exciting, well written, and should motivate lots of readers to care about animals and understand that people who can't hear are not very different from themselves.

Complicated Families

There are lots of complicated relationships in my family such as second cousins, first cousins twice removed, etc. But many young kids today have far more complex ones and there are no generally accepted terms to describe them.

Step-brothers and step-sisters are a clear relationship, but what if the parents get divorced but the kids still keep in touch? Do the kids remain step-siblings?

What if the parents live together but never marry? And what about their other relatives? What should kids call the parents of their mother or father's domestic partner? Grandpartners?

Changes in families are difficult enough for children without the need to figure out terminology for relationships. It's too bad they must deal with things like that at all, but it might make their lives a tiny bit easier if we could come up with appropriate vocabulary.

Any suggestions?

Dog Language

How to Speak Dog, Mastering the Art of Dog-Human Communication by Stanley Coren is one of the most fascinating books I've ever read. After reading a library copy I bought one to keep because it's worth reading and referring to many times.

Coren's book reminds me of Brenda, a deaf dalmation we once had who learned to understand over 350 American Sign Language signs and taught us lots of the canine language Coren mentions in his book.

Anyone interested in animal sciences or linguistics would probably like reading the book, but, although Coren is a professor, the writing style is not academic. Families with pets can learn a lot about how to communicate with them and get them to behave from the book. How to Speak Dog also includes some information about communication with cats and, as we found from our experience with Brenda, many dog gestures are also used by other animals.

I highly recommend this book.

What Can They Mean?

One of my college Linguistics professors told us when someone is studying a different language and they come to a term the native speakers can't define it means the word represents a concept  absolutely basic to that culture. In recent years there have been several terms we used to define easily in American English that people no longer agree on. For instance there have been conflicts about what it means to be dead, how to define a human being, and the meaning of the word "marriage." Although our country has been a "melting pot" made up of immigrants from all over the world, most of us have always agreed on the definitions of those basic terms. But things don't stay the same and our world is certainly changing. In fact there have probably been more changes in the last hundred and fifty years than in the preceding thousand years. I predict that it will be quite a while before we can ever agree on those basic terms again.

Silent Words

Long ago I started to learn American Sign Language from an interpreter who is now my husband. Besides working at the California School for the Deaf for many years, I served as a church Sign Language interpreter, raised three Deaf foster sons, and have taught American Sign Language to lots of people. Our daughter started learning it when she was born.

My husband and I even taught sign language to our first dogs, who were deaf dalmatians. One of them, Brenda, became able to understand about 350 signs (mostly names of individuals and foods) and taught us to understand about 30 animal signs. Brenda was a brilliant dog and able to understand human language about as well as some two year old people do.