My vocabulary isn’t very big. Actually I wouldn’t know. It’s probably average for a dog but we dogs don’t compare. Comparing is one of the things that gives humans agita. Bigger than, smaller than, richer than, who cares? I’m the way I am and since there’s nothing I can do about it why kvetch? Dogs don’t kvetch. We grump sometimes – with good reason – sometimes lose it – but kvetch? Yiddish is an exceptionally human language.
Pedants might rate my vocabulary at kindergarten level, almost high enough to write a bestseller. I know Come, Treat, Leave it, Stop it, Go pee, Go poo, various whistles, groans, grunts, a medley of gestures (some unwitting), and Henry, of course. I also possess a quite extensive lexicon of my own – pawing, tail-wagging (half a dozen variations at least), goo-goo eyes, licking, purrs and barks – which elude exact definition. Sometimes in expression less is more. Carll thinks this too, though you might not know it from his garrulity.
I’m convinced one of humans’ problems is too many words. I say problems because they’re grim and I’m not. Grim equals problems, seems to me; happy equals got-it-all-figured-out. One of the funniest human spectacles is pampered plutocrats pouting. I mean, really. What more could they want – and their world, they howl, is going to hell.
Language being their invention, humans take great pride in it. What other species could boast Shakespeare, they huzzah. But could Shakespeare wag his tail? Evoke sighs with a cock of his little head? Does he play as well in Urdu as English? Based on response rate, dogs talk human a lot better than humans dog. How many humans blurt about Carll – spontaneously, unprompted – “He’s so cute!”
One problem with so many words is they segregate humans into groups which gripe at each other and sometimes go to war. These divisions are both vertical (the literate versus MAGAs, for example) and horizontal (English versus Urdu speakers). Imagine how different our planet if everybody spoke Chinese at, say, a third-grade level and that was that. All dogs talk dog – we can strike up acquaintances lickety-split with a yip and sniff. Thus no war, weapons, immigrant antipathy, a whole bunch of stuff.
Another consequence of so many words is existential confusion. There are currently some six hundred thousand words in Carll’s favorite book, the Oxford English Dictionary. The average human knows about thirty thousand of them (more for you guys, less for MAGAs). Each of these words means something different, even if they’re synonyms. (Pork is not pig or hello howdy, though comparably glossed.) Defining differences ignites disputes. (“Most errors consist only in our not rightly applying names to things,” observed Spinoza.) Today’s Americans, for example, ravage each other over who’s “a Christian”. Can you think of anything sillier?
The caninical (as opposed to canonical) approach to communication is KISS – Keep It Simple Stupid. The fewer words the better. Stick to the basics – subject, verb, object, one tense (present active), no dependent clauses, don’t meander into meanings. When you’ve had your say, quit gassing. Ours is not dese-and-dose dopiness but radical simplicity, which keeps in mind what matters and avoids dissension about insipidities (not to mention disquisitive tedium).
One solution to human misery would be to shrink vocabularies to maybe a dozen words, the same for all, but this fix is hypothetical, not practical. Humans love their individuality: they believe (get this) their distinctions give them distinction! When I dictated this suggestion to my amanuensis, he blanched. “What would I do all day,” he almost wept. “All I have is words!”
Makes you think.