‘Nazis tried to teach dogs to talk and read – and claimed one could even discuss religion. Hitler, a well-known dog lover, hoped the animals would learn to communicate with their SS masters, and supported a special dog school set up to teach them to talk. Nazi officials recruited so-called educated dogs from all over Germany and trained them to tap out signals using their paws. The dog school was called the Tier-Sprechschule ASRA and was based near Hanover. Led by headmistress Margarethe Schmitt, it was set up in the 1930s and continued throughout the war years.

‘Rolf, an Airedale terrier, reportedly ‘spoke’ by tapping his paw against a board, each letter of the alphabet being represented by a certain number of taps. He was said to have speculated about religion, learnt foreign languages, written poetry and asked a visiting noblewoman: ‘Could you wag your tail?’ The patriotic dog even expressed a wish to join the army – because he disliked the French. A Dachshund named Kurwenal was said to speak using a different number of barks for each letter, and told his biographer he would be voting for Hindenburg. And a German pointer named Don imitated a human voice to bark: ‘Hungry! Give me cakes.’

‘But do dogs really talk? Back in 1912 Harry Miles Johnson of Johns Hopkins University said, emphatically, “no.” In a paper in Science, he generally agreed with the findings of Oskar Pfungst of the Institute of Psychology at the University of Berlin who studied a dog famous for its large vocabulary. The dog’s speech is “the production of vocal sounds which produce illusion in the hearer,” Johnson wrote. Nothing in the last century has really changed that scientific opinion.

‘It’s more appropriate to call it imitating than talking, says Gary Lucas, a visiting scholar in psychology at Indiana University Bloomington. Dogs vocalize with each other to convey emotions—and they express their emotions by varying their tones, he says. So it pays for dogs to be sensitive to different tones. Dogs are able to imitate humans as well as they do because they pick up on the differences in our tonal patterns.

‘Owner hears the dog making a sound that resembles a phrase, says the phrase back to the dog, who then repeats the sound and is rewarded with a treat. Eventually the dog learns a modified version of her original sound. As Lucas puts it, “dogs have limited vocal imitation skills, so these sounds usually need to be shaped by selective attention and social reward.” Scientists have made some progress in their study of this important subject: They’ve learned why dogs, and other animals, have rather poor pronunciation and, for example, completely botch consonants.

‘Dogs “don’t use their tongues and lips very well, and that makes it difficult for them to match many of the sounds that their human partners make,” Lucas says. “The canine alphabet differs significantly from ours, featuring a fraction of our consonants (b, f, h, p, r, w, and sometimes y) and the rounder vowel sounds, which are more “sung” than “spoken.” Words are therefore primarily distinguished by minor variations in pronunciation (dogs can differentiate twelve types of r sounds and five degrees of hardness in the letter b).”‘ — collaged

 

 

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p.s. Hey. ** jay, Hi, jay! ‘House’ is truly one of a kind. Journaling … just for yourself? Ah, shit, about the manager’s triggering. Luck with the transfer. Sorry, pal. No, ‘Guide’ is one hundred percent ‘GbV’ related. I love Eggleston, but I don’t think I know that book. I’ll see if it’s accessible. Major upswinging and productive scribbling on every front to you! ** scunnard, Parc Asterix was a much needed if short lived boon. Thanks, man. ** _Black_Acrylic, Ah, Comme de Garcon, of course. Fashion is such a blind spot for me. Or its behind the scenes ins and outs at least. Happy early birthday. Wow, 47. We’ve known each other such a long time, albeit 95% online. I think you and Bill are the last ‘surviving’ members of the original blog gang. Crazy. My birthday is January, 10 and, yeah, same deal. Just barely far enough away to not get totally eaten by Xmas. ** worm, Yeah, ‘House’, the ‘Wizard of Oz’ of the non-elderly set. The new film is written, and we’re just impatiently waiting to fill it in and flesh it out. I don’t want to say too much about it yet ‘cos we tend to revise things once we have a cast. But it has two main characters — a 12 year old puppeteer (and his puppet named Crumb) and an older lad who takes LSD from the 60s and erases his entire identity. Happy you liked ‘Castle Faggot’. I’m in awe of it. I hope the funeral parade was swamping in a good way. And that your Tuesday is sparkly. ** Dominik, Hi!!! It was fun (PA). I needed it. Doing Little Caesar must have been really exhausting but when you’re doing it you’re just doing what it takes. I saw that Placebo cancelled your gig, and I did think of you. Sad, grr. But I think its a sore throat kind of thing, from what I read, so hopefully he/they will swing back through Vienna before he/they settle back down in his/their mansions or whatever. Love’s dog telling you how he feels about you, G. ** Sarah Palmer, Hi! Compete with ‘Jaws’, wow, that should be everything’s goal, come to think of it. The Martine Syms show … I just thought her thing — optical illusion drawings plus sculptural elements sometimes with video — seemed like it has become kind of gentrified. I didn’t think the work had much fresh thought in it. And the Gen Z baiting video components seemed kind of obvious. It didn’t help that there was a big Martine Syms merch store that seemed like it was more the point than the actual art. I might just not have been in the right mood, though. Great about the exhibition. I wish I could see it. My sights are currently set on the Kandinsky and Louise Bourgeois and Tacita Dean/Bruce Nauman shows and the big Dan Flavin exhibition at the Gagosian space out in the suburbs. Interesting about that conservatism and its fallout. Makes sense from what I can see. I’m still flummoxed by why the French language insists on gendering everything and why there’s no way around that. Between ‘With the Beatles’ and ‘Abbey Road’ is a big territory. May I imagine you in the ‘Sgt. Pepper’/’Magical Mystery Tour’ era? Thank you for the Siouxie hair wish. I hope your week is like a foot tall, dyed blue mohawk. ** Carsten, The monsters were grabbing and poking me and even got me in a couple of headlocks, so yes. Luckily for me (and unluckily) my bathroom doesn’t have heating so my clothes dry fairly efficiently in there when I close the door. Enjoy that muse flood. That’s the fucking best. ** Sam F, Hey there, Sam. I just read a very nice chat between you and Scott Laudati over at Zona Motel. I like Tanizaki too, but I haven’t read either of those. Huh. I’ll endeavour to. I know Joey Grantham. Well, not personally, but I like his work. If he rec’d ‘The Marble Swarm’ then he’s on my golden list forever. I’m good. Making the Halloween -> Xmas transition, which always a bit rocky at first. Excellent to see you! ** laura w., To make Cherbourg suitable, we erased the ocean and a million seagulls and essentially its entire identity. It’s actually rather pretty but we stayed far away from those parts. I’m gonna get the new ‘Ocarina’ almost for sure. The degree to which they upgraded the visuals is kinda of mind-blowing. I’ve had ‘See No Evil’ stuck in my brain for days. Could be worse. ** HaRpEr //, ‘House’ is so magical. There really is nothing like it. And his other films don’t come close, disappointingly. That cinema job does sound so much better. Fingers stranglingly crossed. Nice looking mansion, obviously. And kind of charmingly bite-sized seeming, at least in the photo. Luck with the lesser job interview today. How’d did it seem? ** Travis (fka Cal), I watched ‘House’ again last week for Halloween. Right, Sullivan not Harrison, duh, my brain did an unwarranted acrobatic flip. Glad you’re working, and do enjoy your more populated home life. ** Thom, Wow, yeah, the first Television album in particular is something else. ‘Adventure’ too but slightly less so. Now that color over-saturation is de rigeur for films, ‘Begotten’s’ way over-saturation might seem more radical to me or something. Prose mode is always good. I’ve lost my feel for prose writing at the moment, and I need to find my way back there. I hope your week is thoroughly platforming. ** Right. So today you get a post if there was one. See you tomorrow.