Keet Speak

Hi--it's Jay-Jay. Geoffrey is sick today, because he ate too much Christmas cactus, so he's asked me to blog for him. Sometimes, he puts parakeet words in his posts, so I thought I would do an English-Parakeet "dictionary" for all of you who follow the blog. I've been told that lonely parakeets sometimes learn human language. We aren't interested in learning English, but if you want to learn parakeet, I hope this is helpful.

"Jah-Jah!": See you later, sucker!
"CHIRP": I'm here! Where are you? (also known as the "ping")
"CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP!": Grackles on the lawn! (or) Cat on the lawn! (or) Hawk in the sky!
"Chutter, chutter, cheek!": Affectionate gossip about our day-to-day lives with the flightless ones.
"Cheep.": Move over, and make room at the seed dish.
"SQUWAAAK!": Fight! Fight! Fight!

A lot of keet speak is body language--stretches, regurgitation ("I love you"), bobbing, bowing, etc. I think humans would have trouble getting fluent in that part, because they are wingless, their necks don't rotate enough and the knees don't bend backwards.
Bye-Bye!