Vocal training

This is slightly old news now. An asian elephant, Koshnik, has learned to imitate human speech and can now say several (Korean) words. Koshnik can say about 5 words (including hello and lie-down) but apparently he doesn’t mean what he says. Elephants are anatomically very different from humans, and so the fact that this elephant can match the pitch and timbre of human speech (using its trunk stuck into its mouth), is somewhat surprising. Koshnik spent his early years, an important time for elephant bonding, surrounded by humans. Maybe all social animals would be able to speak if kept alone, with only humans for company, at similar stages in their lives. Probably not bees.

Humans might have a whole repertoire of sounds we never try out. We use what we need to communicate and leave it at that. I always thought the ability to roll Rs was a genetic gift, and indeed A claims he absolutely cannot do it. However, more recently I learned that Polish people have to be able to roll their Rs, and if they struggle with it then they get speech therapy. Something A should consider. To be fair, I struggle with the sound required to pronounce Scottish words such as ‘loch’ and ‘Bruichladdich’. Maybe with enough hard work and perseverance, we could not only be rolling our Rs but also meowing convincingly, or producing biosonar for echolocation.

It is tempting to test this idea on the baby (who should soon be re-branded ‘the toddler’). She currently speaks her own language, which sounds to me a little like mandarin, but is also at a fun stage of imitating us and therefore ripe for such training. She seems very keen to mimic ‘uh-oh’ and we are trying to teach her to announce her presence by shouting this over and over again as she crawls into a new room, bringing trouble with her. What if we were to leave her – at this critical developmental stage – in a room 24 hours a day with only a dog for company? Would she begin to bark? And how about if there was a constant beeping sound? Would she too start to beep? I promise not to do it.