Multilingual veterinarians

[cjsmith]

A coworker told me that my language ability would be useful for a veterinarian, "so you can treat French-speaking animals." I thought that was hilarious. If a parrot who speaks French comes into my clinic I'll be able to tell him he's a good bird!

I should learn dog commands in Spanish, now that I think of it. We have several Spanish-speaking clients, and it's handy to be able to tell a dog to sit.

Comments

[mithriltabby]

And then there are all the accents critters have. American dogs say “woof”, Chinese ones say “wu-wu”, Russian ones “gaf-gaf”, and heavens only know what confusion ensues when the American cat “purrs” at a French one expecting “ron ron”...

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

I used to love finding out all the different words for animal sounds when I'd study a language. I think I once knew the equivalent of "woof" and "meow" in Japanese, even. It's neat to see how all of them, while quite different, do resemble the animal's sound in various ways.

[mithriltabby]

I believe in Japanese it’s “wan-wan” and “nya”.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Nyao, also? Wan-wan sounds very familiar. :-)