It was reported earlier this year that researchers at Eötvös Loránd Univ. in Hungary discovered a way to find out what dogs were saying when they barked. The researchers’ original goal was to test a computer algorithm’s ability to identify and differentiate the acoustic features of a dog’s bark and to classify them according to its context. The canines’ barks were categorized into six different situations: fight, walk, alone, stranger, ball, and play. The software correctly classified the barks in 43% of the cases. It could also differentiate between individual dogs. It’s like the Rosetta stone of dogdom.

Too bad they haven’t created a software program to do that with humans. As we’ve so often seen, people’s words are quite frequently taken out of context and said to mean something other than what the speaker intended. With this type of technology mankind could finally uncover what people’s intentions were when they said something. In other words, what did they mean to say? We wouldn’t have to worry about what the definition of is, is. But, until we discover an algorithm to decipher a human’s speech maybe we should all learn to talk like dogs. After all, our four-legged friends, unlike humans, mean what they say and say what they mean.

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