The average dog has the language ability of a 2 ½ year old child and can understand about 165 words.

In the USA and Canada combined, more than 85 million people live in bilingual households.

To function in an average household a dog needs to understand only about two dozen words for common commands.

It is possible to teach a dog to respond to more than one language.

There has been a lot of interest in the ability of dogs to learn human languages, mostly focusing on spoken words, but sometimes including written words or symbols. I was recently giving a radio interview when a caller asked me if it was possible to teach her dog to become bilingual.

Here in Canada, where I live, approximately 18% of the population (about 6.6 million people) are bilingual in English and French. When you take into account all of the other languages (including immigrant and indigenous languages) roughly 41% of Canadians can conduct a conversation in more than one language.

Similarly, in the United States approximately 22% of people (more than 75 million) are bilingual. Of the 350 languages spoken in the US the most common second language is Spanish (representing about 66% of bilingual speakers). Other languages, each spoken by more than a million people include: Chinese (e.g. Cantonese and Mandarin), Tagalog (e.g. Filipino), Vietnamese, Arabic, and French.

Since in North America more than 25% of families own a dog, that means that a lot of dogs are living in a social environment where two or more languages are simultaneously........

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