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Time to decode doggie vocabulary

Last Updated : 12 May 2011, 12:01 IST
Last Updated : 12 May 2011, 12:01 IST

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A few days back I saw him eyeing the Science section of this newspaper — pet dogs have a human vocabulary of upto 100 words, said an article. We started counting the words Bhaunkoo understands: biscuit, sit, run, walking, go get, chappati, ice-cream, come here, no, Mazy, Mona, squirrel, mouse....

I believe he knows 75 words. Of these 25% are in English. He knows twice that number of words in my mother tongue; 5% of his vocabulary consists of names of people. And the rest are coined words that only we in the family understand. While we went about counting, Bhaunkoo got very angry since we had missed his walk time, and his loud barking made my head so numb that I’ve forgotten the numbers. “Doodles, stop barking! Stop!”  I just can’t do mental maths with someone barking into my brain!

Can you tell me how many coined words he knows? And why do you think he is acting off colour?

Out of the maze:

25% words in English + 50% words in Mazy’s mother tongue + 5% name-words = 80%. So Doodles knows 100-80=20% of coined words. 20/100 x 75 words=75/5 =15 words. And I do think he does not feel happy that his vocabulary is less than 100!

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Published 12 May 2011, 12:01 IST

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