As an ardent owner of two West Highland white terriers ROSS FITZGERALD wonders if dogs can understand different languages and distinguish between them.

I TAUGHT my West Highland terriers Belle and Maddie in English to “sit”, “fetch”, “stay”, “roll over” and “come back”, but what would happen if we went to live in Russia and I spoke to them in Russian? Would they still understand me?

As dogs and humans have lived together for thousands of years, surely people and their dogs can communicate with each other, not merely by gestures, but by speech as well?

Searching for answers, I found a summary of new research, “Dogs Can Distinguish Speech from Gibberish – and Tell Spanish from Hungarian”, published in “Scientific America” in January 2022. 

According to Annie Melchor, after neuroscientists Laura Cuaya and Raúl Hernández-Pérez moved from Mexico to Budapest with their border collies, Kun-Kun and Odín, “they realised how different it was to be surrounded by people speaking Hungarian instead of their native Spanish (and) wondered if their canine companions had noticed this as well”. 

As Melchor explains: “Cuaya and Hernández-Pérez work in a research group at Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest. They study the evolution of speech perception in mammals, including dogs. But it was not known if dogs could distinguish if a person was speaking a different language.”

These researchers recruited 18 family dogs, including Kun-Kun and Odín. 

According to “Scientific America”: “The dogs were familiar with either Hungarian or Spanish but not both – and they had been previously trained to lie still in an fMRI machine. 

“Through a pair of noise-cancelling headphones, the dogs heard passages from Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s ‘The Little Prince’ in either Spanish or Hungarian.” 

From the fMRI scans, the Hungarian researchers “saw the same areas of the brain light up, but with different activation patterns, depending on whether the dogs were hearing the story in their native language or a new one – suggesting they were neurologically processing differences between the two languages.” 

Moreover, when dogs heard gibberish, different patterns in brain activity were observed.

In March 2022, this research team published their findings in the journal “NeuroImage”. In summary, their experiments demonstrated that dogs can distinguish familiar languages from unfamiliar ones, and that they can also tell human language from nonsense sounds.

The dogs involved, aged between three and 11, were six Border Collies, including Kun-Kun and Odín; five Golden Retrievers; two Australian Shepherds and one Cocker Spaniel. Two dogs were familiar with Spanish. The other 16 were familiar with Hungarian. 

The dogs listened to two female narrators – one a native Hungarian speaker, the other a native Spanish speaker. 

As the researchers explained: “Each narrator read the story in an engaging tone of voice to sound as natural as possible. Sometimes the dogs heard a recording in Hungarian, sometimes a recording in Spanish, and sometimes a computer-scrambled recording that no longer resembled human speech at all.”

When the dogs listened to readings from “The Little Prince”, the MRI machine scanned their brains to measure what activity was occurring. Each dog was free to leave the machine at any time. Moreover, the owners were present in the scanning room “to help each dog feel comfortable”. To understate the case, the passages from Saint-Exupéry’s classic story were not replete with human commands to dogs!

The researchers discovered that all 18 dogs could distinguish speech of any kind from non-speech: “The primary auditory cortex of the canine brains showed distinct activity patterns, depending on whether the subjects heard the scrambled passages or the original recordings.” Amazingly, they concluded that “dogs are the first non-human animal to show this ability to distinguish between languages. And they did it spontaneously. No training was required.” 

I’m not sure about gorillas, chimpanzees and elephants. But it seems to me likely that they, too, can differentiate between different languages. 

Many owners of older pets will find it intriguing that the brains of older dogs showed more activity in their secondary auditory cortex. 

This strongly suggests that they were better able to distinguish between the two languages. Hence the speculation in “NeuroImage”, that “all those additional years spent living with people might have provided them more familiarity with the languages spoken in their home”. 

According to an article, by Dr Stephanie Gibeault, published in 2023 by the American Kennel Club, “Can Dogs Understand Different Languages?”, the answer to this question is “yes”.

It is fascinating to learn that a different team at the Eötvös Loránd university in Budapest, has recently concluded a study on the acoustic bases of human voice identity processing in dogs. These researchers unambiguously stated that dogs “can recognise their owner from voice alone – no visuals or odours were needed.”

Most dedicated dog owners, including myself, constantly talk to our dogs. Many of us believe that our dogs actually listen to us, and that they want to hear what we say to them. 

But as the Hungarian researchers (who are world leaders in the field of whether dogs can understand different languages) have suggested: “Future research could explore whether this human language perception is unique to their species.”

Ross Fitzgerald AM is Emeritus Professor in History & Politics at Griffith University. His latest books are a memoir “Fifty Years Sober: An Alcoholics Journey” and the co-authored political satire “Pandemonium”. All books are published by Hybrid and available online.