• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.29 no.2
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• pp.125-132
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• 2010

Since the ancient times, animals that can imitate the voices of human beings have been considered extremely special. There are very few such animals, and the parrot is an example of them. For a long time, there had been no reported case of a rooster being able to mimic the voice of a human being, but talking roosters were recently found in Korea and the Kyrgyz Republic, generating much talk. In this study, the vocal characteristics of such roosters were examined, and their pronunciation-related statistics and actual sound sources were analyzed. The analysis results showed that even though the roostets cannot converse with people, they can imitate the human voice, uttering the words "An-dwae," and "A-ni-ya" in Korean, which mean "No" in English, when someone tries to catch their wings. A similar situation 'occurred in the Kyrgyzstan. The results of the listening survey on these sounds made by the roosters showed that most people recognized the words uttered by the roosters and that nobody thought that the words sounded like "cock-a-doodle-doo." It can be said that such roosters can make the sounds of the human voice because of their innate vocal organ and characteristics, which are significantly different from those of the general roosters. Their vocal organ and characteristics cause the sounds that they make to change in their vocal cords due to their high tension when humans try to catch them.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.31 no.4
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• pp.235-243
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• 2012

This paper studies characteristics and causes of sound, and many others by distinguishing passivity and activity of the cases of a dog vocalizing human's words. As a result of the previous cases of vocalization of human's words, the dog was able to understand characteristics of a host's voice and imitate the sound using his own vocal organs. This is the case of passive vocalization accompanied by temporary voice imitation without a function of communication. On the contrary, as a consequence of the recently reported case in which a dog vocalizes such words as "Um-ma" and "Nu-na-ya," it shows the vocalization pattern clearly distinguished from the prior cases. The given dog repeatedly vocalizes pertaining words in an active manner according to circumstances and plays a role of fundamental communication and interaction with its host. The reason why the dog can vocalize the man's words actively is determined to be that the dog has a high level of intelligence and intimacy with its host, that people react actively to its pertaining pronunciation, and so forth. The following results can be used for the study that investigates animals' sound with vocalization possibility and language learning feasibility.