Would they become citizens? Would we give them rights and votes? Would they have to pay taxes?
My friend has a dog and a board with big paw size buttons that the dog can push. When the dog pushes a button, the board speaks a word. Thus the dog can speak.
For example, last night the dog came to her and pressed the buttons and said " fix bed". It turns out there was a tortilla chip laying in the middle of the dog’s bed and he wanted it removed.
So there you go dogs can talk. And maybe other animals can talk. They just need a little device to do it. Like a special kind of cell phone maybe.
This is real. It might be the new big thing.
It may not be “speaking” but it is communicating (relatively) complex concepts.
Dogs with buttons can associate them with people, actions, locations, and emotions, and use those buttons to express those connections, which is by definition communication.
Any dog owner knows they also communicate these things non-verbally by nosing at their leash, pawing at the door, wagging their tail, or dropping a ball in your lap.
What’s extra interesting about the dogs with buttons is they will sometimes clearly and communicate emotional ideas without expectation of reward, like
FIDO,HAPPYorMOM,GOODbefore just laying down to mind their own business.Sure, they dont understand the context of the Latin root of the word your saying, and they can’t read Shakespeare, but they can still communicate ideas, and respond to your actions, like someone learning Chinese for the first time and only picking up every 12th word and relying on context clues.
Their capacity for vocabulary isn’t infinite, but it’s clearly there.
By that logic would you say deaf people communicating in sign language are not speaking?
How about Stephen Hawking? You could swap all of the buttons on his computer with Japanese, or a series of beeps and he would eventually figure out how to get the same message across, does that invalidate him using English as his main language of communication?
All those examples of people you gave are still using language. Language can be spoken, written, signed, and more. Maybe my original comment wasn’t clear enough when I said “dogs can’t speak.” Dogs can certainly communicate, as many organisms can, but they can’t use language.