Science

From her perspective she's using human language just as she hears it -- just as her mind processes it.

I sort of know what this is like. If I'm not focused on listening I catch the tone of someone speaking but the words might as well be a foreign language.

That's probably why I was in speech therapy from kindergarten to the third grade. Two of my siblings and one of my nieces had similar issues.

Our hearing is just fine. I can hear a very subtle problem in a complex machine that others miss but I don't always catch what other people are saying, and I can't understand anyone in a noisy room where everyone is talking, or hear the lyrics of a song when I'm listening to the music.

Be that as it may, our culture has always underestimated the intelligence of animals.