On Dog and Cat Language

On Dog and Cat Language

Imagine that in the future, dogs and cats acquire the power of speech. This may be by evolution, or by our genetic manipulation, or a combination of the two; and the result gives dogs and cats the full human mental mechanics of vocabulary acquisition and grammar; by which they could send messages of great complexity and specificity.

I predict that they would express this ability in different ways. Dogs would learn the human’s language; they would struggle to approximate human pronunciation; and it would mostly be about giving human orders to the dogs. Typical dog utterance; “What can I do for you?” The dogs would also talk to each other, in a doggy sub-dialect of the human language, with more words about smells. Some of these neologisms will be appropriated by the humans.

Whereas the cats would teach a language to their humans; it would be in normal cat sounds, which the humans will clumsily approximate in reply; and it would be mostly about giving cat orders to the humans. Typical cat utterance; “What’s in it for me?” It would be a private language, known to the cat and its human alone. The cats would never converse directly; but they will often use a human to relay insults to each other.

In theory a two-timing cat can pass secret messages from one human to another; but only if the humans can motivate the cat to do so.