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Tuesday, February 5, 2013

Bilingual dogs?

Recently I was co-teaching a class with a woman whose native tongue is Spanish. She speaks English as a second language and has been in the United States for three years. She was trying to get a kid to play with some toys, and she kept making the animal noises to get the 2-year-old's attention. I joined in with her, and suddenly we were both barking and ribbit-ing. The funny thing is that she took a toy dog and said "guau-guau" and I said "ruff, ruff." We looked at each other and laughed. She then said to me, "you know that animals speak different in English and in Spanish." 
Then I suddenly remembered having that conversation in the past, and now I realize that my animals speak mostly English! This does not bode well for someone who is teaching her son Spanish. It really doesn't matter, I just find it funny and interesting. The reason most of my animals speak English is because I have learned my animal noises from Gram. His animals are very sophisticated sounding- almost like the animal itself. It's weird how good he is at that. I am not, but I do try. I cannot even spell out what a rooster sounds like in English-but I know in Spanish is "qui-qui-riqui." Baby chicks say "peep-peep" in English and "pio-pio-pio" in Spanish. Gram now says "pio-pio" though. Does this mean he's learning Spanish? 
I went searching in Nesta's books the different noises that animals make, and I found a few that support the fact that animals do sound different in different languages.
One of the few bilingual books.
 
 "The baby chicks are singing peep peep peep"               "Los pollitos dicen pio, pio, pio."
                                          Lions growl.
                                          El leon dice GRRR.
                                                     El perro dice "guau-guau."
                                                      El gallo dice "qui-quiri-qui."

What do animals say in other languages? 

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