Teaching Two Adult Parakeets to Talk

User Question
I have two adult parakeets and I was wondering if I could teach them to talk. They are in the same cage and they are used to being handled.

Lisa's Answer
Well, there is a difference between "possible" and "likely". You need to think about humans and how they learn to talk. If you take a baby human and plunk it down into any culture in the world, it will learn that language easily. After a year or two the child will have quite a vocabulary and understand the sounds, the nuances, and grammar at least in basic terms. If you then tell a 16 year old teenager "learn a new language", it requires a good teacher, lots of repetition, and serious work. If you tell an adult 40 year old to "learn a new language", that adult has to put in substantial effort to become fluent.

The same is true with a parakeet. When a parakeet is a baby, its mind is blank. It doesn't know "how to communicate" yet and it will readily learn whatever it hears. This can be parakeet talk if other parakeets are around - or human talk if humans are around. It's eager to learn.

However, when a parakeet is an adult, it already knows how to talk in whatever language it was taught. So it doesn't really see a pressing need to learn new languages. The keet doesn't necessarily even understand that the "noises" made are supposed to be communication. When we hear car doors slamming, we don't think they're telling us something - we just assume it's random noise. So the same is true for a parakeet.

I would never say never - it could be that your keets can learn at least a few whistles or a word or two. But I wouldn't rely on it or "judge" the keets based on their ability or inability to learn. You're welcome to try, and I have lots of advice on my site on how to do that. But assume that your time spent with them will be fun interaction time, and that IF they learn to say or whistle anything, it's just an added bonus.

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