Can dogs be bilingual?

[IndianaTiberiusWolff]

We have a very close family friend who would love to watch our puppy for us when we go out for a day, or the weekend, but her English is not very good. Indiana loves her to death, but cannot understand her commands because of her accent. Would it be too confusing to teach him basic commands in a second language (sit, down, leave it, etc)? He already knows these commands in English very well, and I know being consistent with your training is extremely important, so I wasn't sure if using a different language would be too confusing for him.
I know he doesn't know it's two different languages; I'm concerned that having two different words for the same movement would confuse him.
Thanks for your help!

[Nettle]

It would be easier to teach the human. Or maybe not. Dogs are pretty smart, but it would be asking a lot to expect the dog to respond to two different words for the same thing.

Why don't you teach the dog hand signals? They are the same in any accent.

[nightsrainfall]

I know 3 dogs that are bilingual but they come from bilingual homes. Ok, they are tri-lingual if you count that you can do the hand sign without words. I'm pretty sure the hand signs are what helped with them being "bilingual".

They were all taught in spanish first for most commands but there was also hand signals. And then (as the mother was learning english and the children started using english more) the hand signal was then combined with the english word instead of the spanish. The dogs could then do (hand-signal sit), sit, and sientate(spelling?), but I met them at the age of 4, 5, and 13 so they may have had years of this bilingual use.

Not all the dogs know the command in all "3" langauges. For example roll over they only know in spanish because it's not preformed enough for the dog to connect it to the gesture and english. Fetch they only know in english because well that's how it was originally taught and it doesn't have a hand gesture.

I think for their case, the hand gesture helped a lot because the dog assocated the hand signal with the action, and then noted/remembered the word. They then repeated the words enough (with the hand gesture, action, treat) that the dog assocated the word with the action, and finally the word and action could be done independently.

This was a bilingual house though, everyone in the house used both langauges and lots of hand gestures. When I visited I used both languages and I don't even know spanish, lol!

[IndianaTiberiusWolff]

That makes a lot of sense. I speak Hebrew, but my husband does not. I was originally thinking of teaching him like my half-brothers were taught, with one parent speaking only English, and the other parent speaking only Hebrew. However, Indiana spends so much time with me since I work part-time that I'm afraid he would lose all his English commands, and my husband would be left with only hand signals or being forced to learn Hebrew words in order to communicate with him (he already tried to learn, he's not very good with languages).
I think hand signals might be the easiest way, but if anyone else has any suggestions I would appreciate the input!

[easilyconfused]

My dogs understand their commands in english, japanese, french, hand signals and eye movements. IMO they will learn any cue you teach them as they are dogs so its all foreign to them

[Mattie]

One of my uncles had a farm in North Wales, all his dogs, all Collies, were bilingual, they all understood both Welsh and English.