Neighbour doesn’t speak English at home

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I know I am just being nosey, but my new neighbour chats away in English to me, I always assumed and she is English. But I hear her chatting to her dog (she lives alone) and I don’t recognise the language at all. I have a fairly good grasp of French and Spanish, recognise German and Italian and a few others. I am just intrigued as to what she is speaking because I don’t recognise it at all. Would I be rude to ask her? I don’t want her to think I am eavesdropping, but then it wouldn’t matter anyway!!

I am just really intrigued!

I had loads of pet names for my horse. I could call him worse than shite and he still came to call. A previous horse was imported from Germany and did not respond to voice commands until I spoke to him in German. His ears would swivel like K9’s! I found it hilarious.

My dogs are usually bilingual, it’s an easy way to avoid having to talk to other dog walkers, switch to French/Spanish and walk past quickly.

Not sure how you missed it:

If I was re-homing I’d look for a caring and loving home, preferably a ‘cat person’ of course.

hth

You have inspired me to give it a go! I have just completed my first Duolingo Finnish lesson. 😊

Excellent, or should I say mahtava!

Finnish is fun. I do it on Duolingo too....

I also say she’s Dutch. My parents were Dutch and pets were spoken to in Dutch. If I see a cat in the street that will allow me to stroke it, it gets the full verbal Dutch treatment. It’s the only thing I can speak Dutch to nowadays.

Kiitos!

(I hope that's right!)

Yup that's right

Most of my neighbours don't speak English at home, because they are Welsh speakers. Consequently, trying to make conversation with their pre-schoolers is embarrassing because their Welsh language skills far outrank mine! Thankfully, their dogs aren't fussy about whether they are addressed in Welsh or English.

However, I do persist with trying out my limited Welsh on my dogs. They get particularly excited at, "Amser gwely!" (bedtime)...

I took one to the pet shop with me once. The owner asked if my dog understood Welsh or English. It didn't really matter, as my dog had seen the treat on offer and sat down politely to receive it without a word crossing anyone's lips 😁

I had an Irish horse who didnt speak English, voice commands were in Irish.

I can’t remember what they were now so prob just as well he’s away to the big stable in the sky. it was decades ago. Sweet big lummox that he was.

Is that the lovely horse that Fr Ted and Fr Dougal wrote a song about for the euro song contest?

Our dog is trilingual- Welsh/English & cat (raised from a pup by The Lady Mac and Luthien). He understands commands in all 3 languages and usually ignores them all unless it’s ‘bwyd/food’. Or Luthien telling him to behave, reinforced by a paw.

The cats (down to 1 from 3, unfortunately) are also bilingual but Willow refused to understand anything except ‘Catnip’, The Lady Mac would ignore everyone except Daddy & Luthien pretends she only speaks cat, usually as commands to Mum or the dog.

Watching two cats try to teach a pup to chase mice (by bringing in live ones) is a whole other story ….

I’m English and speak Japanese to my dog. I picked up basic conversational when I lived there but nobody else I know speaks it. So the dog gets it all.

A friend of mine is Spanish and has lived here for forty years. She still has the broadest of Spanish accents and told me she now thinks in English. I’d never even thought of that before 🙂

Me too. We used to call it 'pan-Slavic'. It's pretty easy to understand each other.

This explains a lot about my Dcat.

I though she already said that it was Gaelic?

The same happened in Fife post-war and I still hear it today.

A couple of years ago, I had a Polish plasterer working in my house. He'd have a different bloke with him as an assistant each time and they'd communicate in a a melange of Slavic languages - very often with a lot of good-natured swearing.

One night, a new bloke said hello to me as he came in. When they were upstairs, I heard the Polish lad asking the other whether he knew the woman...This was followed with a bit of swearing (not about me).

In the end, I couldn't resist and shouted up "A kto zdes' govorit po-russki?"

There was silence and then they both burst out laughing.

Yes, I thought someone answered already?

I taught my dog to respond to French as well as English, he was pretty clever though, but his English was much better than French all the same