YouTube videos to teach to talk

[Boki]

I will say upfront that I completely understand that not all Amazons will talk. That is not the reason to get a parrot. But it really seems they are having more fun because they get more reaction when they talk. Now what I do see is that Mac (blue front) is really trying hard to talk. He probably has never been in a situation to get the attention. It is a lot of gurgling but it is getting better and better each day.

Since I am a male with a somewhat deep voice, I do not think I am the best candidate to teach my 2 Amazons to speak and learn new words. I understand that children and women are better at doing it. Now I have found some videos that claim they can teach the parrots to talk. One of these videos is 8 hours long but it does say there are hour breaks. What is the general consensus about using videos to facilitate teaching parrots to talk?

I tried the search engine to find discussions on this topic in the past but I struck out. I apologize if this has been rehashed many times before.

 

[itchyfeet]

Just be careful what you wish for.
My mothers Galah sings 'let it go...' from Frozen.
Make sure you can handle what is on those videos....on repeat.

 

[AmyMyBlueFront]

Amazon's ALWAYS have more fun!




Jim

 

[Kiwibird]

I say let it be a natural process. If he wants to talk, he will, if not, he won't. My male amazon does not talk per se, but he does do this adorable babbling sometimes where he almost forms words. Otherwise, I just enjoy his amusing bird noises.

From what I have seen, most of those 'teach your bird to talk' videos are just the same word or phrase on repeat for hours and hours and hours. That is not good for a bird (or any other sentient being with the ability to process sound). Repetitive sounds are actually considered a form of psychological torture on par with waterboarding in how 'effective' it is to break the will of whomever is being tortured. Just be sure if you do play things like that for your bird, they aren't just repeating [insert word or phrase of choice] over and over and over for 8 straight hours. That would be akin to torture for your bird! You'd probably be better off just turning on the radio so he hears constant words, but not the same ones.

 

[wrench13]

My Salty, a yellow shoulder amazon, loves to watch and listen to Indian Ring Necks in particular and a few BFA on Youtube, and he has learned several phrases from there, 'Pretty ,pretty , pretty bird" 'Peek a Boo" What Cha doing" and several others, all from You tube. Not special talking videos, just ones people post . Parrots can see digital screens just fine, but not old style scanning rate TVs. Parrots repeat things they hear but only the things that they find interesting.

 

[LordTriggs]

I find youtube pretty good not just for teaching speech but showing them little tricks and such. My Conure seemed to learn a few bits from Ringnecks, I think their very emotive eyes and speech patterns inticed him to learn

 

[EllenD]

I'd let it be a totally natural process, because as Kiwi stated it's all about the individual bird, and if they want to talk they will, if they don't then they won't. Yes, they learn by repetition, but again, only if they want to talk in the first place. I have a 2 year-old Green Cheek Conure (not at all known for being talkers, let along good talkers) that is the best talker in my house by-far. He knows between 15-20 words and phrases, and it seems every day he says something new that I've never heard him say before...And his voice is extremely clear. It's bizarre, and was totally unexpected. Everything he says he learned from listening to me, but I certainly never purposely tried to teach him to talk, nor did I ever repeat things to him over and over again. He did it all on his own because he wanted to.

I guess it's just me, but I really don't like the idea of my birds saying words and phrases that I don't say and talking in some voice that I don't know, all because i sat them in front of a YouTube video all day long, every day. And now they talk like some person that i don't know, and say words and phrases and make sounds that are totally foreign to me. I mean, me shape our human children's voices, speech patterns, etc. because they listen to us every day, and you can tell that "this is your kid"...I guess the idea of it just seems very impersonal to me...If I was going to try to purposely teach my birds to talk I would make a recording of me saying things that I say in my voice, and then put the recordings on a loop for them to listen to, and if they want to talk then eventually they would talk.