For those of us who live with and love our dogs, it is already a certainty. But now the most cutting-edge scientific research is here to confirm it: dogs understand words, and human language is certainly no mystery to them. On this subject, there are now multiple studies carried out both in the United States and in various European countries. Particularly illuminating, for example, is the substantial British study that discovered how pet dogs are able to process elements of human speech.

Dogs understand words, but also emotions

All of this was confirmed by analysing the response to human speech of more than 250 dogs, which were found to use different hemispheres of the brain to process the verbal and emotional aspects of the various words used by the researchers. Just like us humans, dogs pick up on the intonations and characteristics of both the voice and the words being spoken. And there is another significant finding that the research has brought to light: dogs are also able to process information about the speaker, such as their personality and the emotions displayed during speech. Even though it is not yet possible to say how much or in what way they comprehend the information contained in human speech, it can be stated scientifically that they respond to the verbal content and the personality — likeable, unlikeable, gentle, assertive, aggressive — of the person speaking.

The Science study: dogs understand words

The subject is also addressed by the journal Science, which publishes a study demonstrating that dogs perfectly understand what we say, and that they do so in a way similar to how we do. The research, this time, was conducted by analysing the brain activity of dogs tested in an MRI scanner while they were spoken to in different ways, with different words and with a series of linguistic variations. It was thus discovered that in dogs there is a relationship in the comprehension of the semantic meanings of words and the tone in which they are spoken. Just like people, our four-legged friends interpret the meaning of words using the left hemisphere of their brain and the tone in which they are spoken using the right. The studies have nonetheless highlighted how the mental capacity to understand words exists in other animal species too, but what makes the dog truly intuitive is the unique and unbreakable bond it forms with us human beings.

The story of Rico the dog

Also on the subject of canine understanding of human language is the research of a group of scholars at the Max Planck institute of anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. To carry it out, the researchers enlisted the help of Rico, a border collie. Rico learned to recognise a series of objects and toys of various colours, associating them with the names by which they were identified by the researchers. At the end of the various tests, it was demonstrated that Rico was perfectly able to associate objects with the names by which they were defined and could retrieve, without ever making a mistake, the object designated by the verbal request. The researchers ultimately demonstrated that Rico developed a vocabulary comparable to that of chimpanzees, dolphins, sea lions and parrots trained to recognise human language. But all of this without any specific training. In Rico and in dogs, the knowledge is innate. And his capacity for association could be compared to that of a three-year-old child. The moral of the story? What anyone who lives with and loves a dog understands from the very first moment they look into their companion's eyes is now a scientific certainty. This does not increase the immense love we have for our four-legged friends, but it becomes significant when the conversation turns to abandonment or the mistreatment and abuse of these wonderful animals.