To the editor:
Billed as the “world’s smartest dog,” the amazing border collie Chaser died this past week in Spartanburg, South Carolina. With the help of her owner, the late Professor John W. Pilley, Chaser developed a vocabulary understanding unrivaled in the canine world. Nouns were Chaser’s bread and butter (okay, kibble and gravy): she knew 1,022 of them. Apparently, she preferred facts to fluff – you could always chew on them like a good bone.
Unlike fluffy politicians, Chaser had little use for adjectives – no “tremendous! horrible! huge! unbelievable! massive! weak! incredible! pathetic! ridiculous!” for Chaser. Just the facts, ma’am. Speaking of the president (when do we not?), it might be an interesting lexicological experiment (sorry about that adjective) to compare Chaser and Trump nouno a nouno.
Okay, we know the border collie’s numbers are 1,022. For the president’s sample, let’s take his recorded tweets over the past four years. I’ve been working back through his estimated 45,000 or so tweets made as POTUS, plus another 10,000 since he began campaigning in 2015. Oddly enough, if you discount all those bombastic adjectives, Trump’s total ordinary noun knowledge hovers around 750-800 words – quite a bit fewer than many in the sandbox set. (No wonder he refuses to go on Nickelodeon’s TV show “Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?”) Also, keep in mind it was said that Chaser not only knew more than a thousand nouns, she knew what they meant as well!
Chaser didn’t learn to understand language by commands based on rewards. She didn’t perform tricks because someone gave her a dog biscuit stamped “Four More Years!” As her owner, Dr. Pilley, told the New York Times in 2014, “the big lesson is to recognize that dogs are smarter than we think, and given time, patience, and enjoyable reinforcement, we can teach them just about anything.”
Alas, the same cannot be said about this president. Old dog, no new tricks, same venomous hate and division.
Daniel Sullivan
Bennington