We’ve adopted a dog. She was estimated to be about a year old, very sweet and gentle.  With 2 children in the household, a 3^rd one was no sweat, the dog fell into our family quite nicely.  We began training the dog immediately, and we noticed that she didn’t understand a thing we said. I figured it was because she was young and used to an uninhibited lifestyle – after all, she was found at a beach town in Spain.

Mother Tongue

We were amazed at how quick she learned things. She “sat” and “stayed” and understood “no” and “good dog”. Maybe English was her “mother tongue” … after all, she is a Scottish terrier.  We spoke in English to her, figured that she needed to learn English words if she was going to fit with our family.

Deutsch

Strangely though, one evening when we were watching TV, during which the dog normally sleeps nearby ignoring the TV, we ran across an interview of a German person – speaking in German.  The Dog Instantly Perked up and started “watching” TV.  Did she understand German? We changed the channel, and she returned to her resting position.  Maybe it was a fluke, as dogs are thought to not have the ability to actually understand languages or sentences, but rather words, tones, pitch and body Language.  Interestingly, a few nights later, we were watching TV when another program came on with a different German speaker, and again, the dog instantly perked up. [We normally don’t watch programs in German, so this was quite unique for us to have German language on TV in our house.]

¡Ven aquí!

Back to the dog now… one command, that the dog couldn’t quite understand (or she conveniently didn’t want to), was “come here”.  Trying to get her to come in for the night was a challenge as we discovered that we adopted a party animal… each night she would insist on exploring the grounds, hunting lizards and other creatures of the garden.  Finally, I switched to Spanish, and voilà, she understood “ ¡Ven aquí ahora!”  I was tickled.  The dog responded to Spanish.  Which as an afterthought, made sense, as we are in Spain.

Dodo

Each night, when it’s bed time, we tell the kids in French “dodo”, which is leftover from their baby days for time to go “night night”.   It also works for the dog!  It’s very cute that the dog quickly understood that “dodo” means everyone goes upstairs and lights out for the night… she happily climbs into her own bed to sleep.

Summer Immersion Program

A time-honored summer trip to the grandparents is typically a summer custom in our family.  School’s out and distant grandparents await to enjoy their fun in the sun with the beloved grandchildren.  Likewise, the kids love the fact that grandma has ice cream desserts after each meal. It’s win-win.  Doggy too!  So, we got the dog an official EU Passport (I didn’t know they even existed), and off to grandmother’s house we went.  Oh, by they way, we’re leaving the “granddog” a few weeks while we go to visit a few distant French cities and monuments… Is it ok? And she doesn’t understand French, apart from “dodo”, thanks!

Well, we can attest, the Scottie adopted in Spain, who reacts to German, understands a few commands in English and Spain, can now understand French!  We’re talking full on immersion in French. That's a summer immersion program!

Okay, if you ask the dog experts, they claim that dogs simply don’t understand human languages, it’s the tone, body language and repetition that they react too…maybe so, but in our multi-lingual family, even the dog gets it!

So there you have it... 

Raising a multi-lingual dog is much like raising multi-lingual kids - yes this is still the year of the DOG!

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This article was written by Rachanee Thevenet, Co-Founder of HT Localization.  Rachanee is an Asian-American expat living in Spain with her family.  She loves all things international including food, art, literature, culture, languages and people.  She has years of professional product marketing expertise and global expansion experience.

HT Localization, LLC. is a worldwide translation & localization agency providing a full range of professional language translation services, including social media localization, marketing translations, website translations, software localization, eLearning materials, documentation translations, etc.  With locations in the US, Spain, France, Zambia & Thailand, and coverage across all languages and most industries, HT Localization is well positioned to provide around the globe services for all translation needs.  

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