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In this series we will cover different methods on training your bird to talk. Birds can be taught to talk rather than simply mimic sounds. In the past, it was thought that one-on-one interaction, including much out-of-context repetition, was the best way to teach parrots to talk. Many birds throughout the ages have acquired human words this way, but these birds are more likely merely mimicking the sounds of the words. Modern parrot behavior consultants are more excited about the prospect of talking rather than mimicking birds, and so our ways have changed.
It must be noted that there is never any guarantee that any bird of any species will ever learn to say a single word.
What Birds Will Talk
Any hookbill parrot that are kept as pets can talk. This includes Budgies ,Parakeets, Cockatiels,Lovebirds & Lories, Conures, Parrots, Macaws, Amazons, Pionus Parrots, Cockatoos, And Caiques. I have heard that only males will learn to speak but that's just not true. Both males and female Parrots will learn to talk.
What Age Is Best To Train Your Bird To Talk
First of all, you should have your bird completely tame before you start intensively training the bird to talk. But if your bird is already tame, the earlier the age the better. This isn't to say that an older bird cannot be trained to talk, because they can. Its just easier as a young parrot to learn, where an older parrot may be set on its ways making it difficult.
Differences In Speech With Species
Each Parrot species speaks in totally different ways. Some like the Budgie, speak really fast and so its hard to understand their speech, While an Amazon might Yell their words. Understanding how your species may speak will help you train them in a way so that they will respond in an acceptable vocabulary. For example, you may spread out your words for the fast speaking Budgie so that saying "Hello Birdie" will be spoken to the bird like "Heeell-lloooo Biirrr- Dee" but when the bird repeats it in their fast fashion it will sound like "Hello Birdie" in a regular speed. When in reality, you spoke to them in slow broken syllables. For an amazon or Macaw which my Yell, you may want to speak in a soft quiet tone.
Different Schools Of Speech
There are 2 different schools of how to train your bird. The old school way is really training your bird to repeat and mimic you. This is the predominantly used method for hundreds of years. It works and is effective, but at the end of the day, your bird is really just mimicking you. The newest method of teaching your parrot to speak is to teach your bird how to truly talk, to use recognizable words and present conversations. A lot of this methods techniques come from the intense research of Dr. Irene Pepperberg at the Alex Foundation . This method is very interesting and effective, though I personally don't know if this will work for birds other than Africans, Amazons, and Macaws. I just haven't tried it or heard it being used on anything else so I cannot say how effective it would be. This method will result in your bird recognizing differences in items like being able to identify a bigger or smaller item by speech (i.e. which block is bigger, the blue or the red - the blue being the larger block).
We will cover cover the newer method of training your bird to talk in this series. And hopefully at the end you will have started your journey to having a talking parrot!
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