The language of animals

When we want to express ourselves, we use our speech. Animals have their own language as well. And they use it exactly like us humans. That is to say, they talk to each other in order to exchange information. Basically each animal species has a particular language. Even termites communicate with each other. When in danger, they slap their bodies on the ground. This is their way of warning each other. Other animal species whistle when they approach enemies. Bees speak with each other through dancing. Through this, they show other bees where there is something to eat. Whales make sounds that can be heard from 5,000 kilometers away. They communicate with each other through special songs. Elephants also give each other various acoustic signals. But humans cannot hear them. Most animal languages are very complicated. They consist of a combination of different signs. Acoustic, chemical and optical signals are used. Aside from that, animals use various gestures. By now, humans have learned the language of pets. They know when dogs are happy. And they can recognize when cats want to be left alone. However, dogs and cats speak very different languages. Many signals are even exact opposites. It was long believed that these two animals simply didn't like each other. But they just misunderstand each other. That leads to problems between dogs and cats. So even animals fight because of misunderstandings…

Guess the language!

______an is the native language of about 12 million people. The majority of those people live in ______a and other countries in southeastern Europe. ______an is counted among the South Slavic languages. It is closely related to Croatian and Bosnian. The grammar and vocabulary are very similar. Such being the case, it is easy for ______ans, Croatians, and Bosnians to understand each other. The ______an alphabet contains 30 letters. Each one has a distinct pronunciation.

Parallels to ancient tonal languages can be found in the intonation. In Chinese, for example, the pitch of the syllables changes with the meaning. That is similar to ______an. However, in this case only the pitch of the accented syllable plays a role. The strongly inflectional language structure is another hallmark of ______an. That means that nouns, verbs, adjectives and pronouns are always inflected. If you are interested in grammatical structures, you should definitely learn ______an!