According to a Hungarian study, man’s faithful friend grasps the difference between his master’s language and others.
If it is common to hear masters speak to their dog in English or German, is it true that the animal understands all languages? Is he able to differentiate aulj the“, in Hungarian, of a “sit down” in English or a “Sit down” in French ? A Hungarian study published in the scientific journal NeuroImage, analyzed the brains of ten species of dogs during the reading of a passage from Little Prince of Saint-Exupéry.
Read alsoGerman, French or English: which language should animals speak?
The text was read twice, first in the language of the master, then in a foreign language, with a voice that the animals did not know, so as not to falsify the results, the dog being particularly sensitive to the sound of the voice of his master.
Mother tongue recognition
When reading the text in the native language, the analyzes show a zone of greater activity at the level of the secondary auditory cortex and the precentral gyrus, zones respectively for deciphering and recognizing the emotions of the speaker. Therefore, the researchers conclude that “the dog could extract certain auditory regularitiesof speech and thus recognize the one he is used to hearing. Another element highlighted by scientists: the older the animal, the more its brain is activated by the sound of the language it knows. What “suggests a role for the amount of language exposure“, they add.
However, are certain languages preferred? In a previous article, Alexis Lécu, veterinarian and scientific director of the Paris Zoological Park explained to Le Figaro that animals were sensitive to guttural languages, with sounds that come from the back of the throat, like German. Nevertheless, “it is not the language itself that allows better understanding, he nuanced. It is the tone and pitch of our voice.»