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They understood basic grammatical constructions, such as the difference between “me eat apple” and “apple eat me.”
它们也能明白基本的语法结构，比如“我吃苹果”和“苹果吃我”的区别。
They invented their own words, such as “water bird” for a swan.
它们自己还发明单词，例如将天鹅称作“水鸟”。
One especially adept chimp named Lucy was seen leafing through a magazine and signing “cat” when she saw a tiger, “drink” when she saw a wine ad, and “cry hurt food” when she tasted a radish.
一只名叫Lucy的黑猩猩十分聪慧，人们发现它翻阅杂志时，看到老虎会作出“猫”的手势；看到酒饮广告会作出“喝”的手势。当它吃到萝卜时，会“说”这是“伤心哭泣的食物”。
Another chimp in a similar experiment came up with the sentence “Give orange me give eat orange give me you,” when he wanted an orange.
在另一项类似的实验中，一只想吃橙子的黑猩猩用手势表示：“给橙我，给吃，橙给我，你”。
Sound familiar? If you’ve ever had a two-year old in the house you may recognize that kind of pattern.
听起来耳熟吧？如果你家里有一个两岁小孩，你一定对这样的场景不陌生。
In fact, chimps were found to have roughly the linguistic abilities of two-year-old humans.
事实上，人们发现黑猩猩大约有两岁儿童的语言能力。
It’s not Einstein, but it’s a far cry from being “dumb animals.”
它虽不及爱因斯坦这样的巨匠，但也绝不会是“愚蠢动物”。
译文为可可英语翻译，未经授权请勿转载!
