He’s still quite young, but we ought to be able to teach him how to ask for things – but what words do we use!!! I thought of ‘give me’, being short, however that just sounds so rude and impolite. As indeed does ‘I want’ which I also thought of. The thought of having a little voice shouting ‘give me a sunflower seed’ might sound a bit demanding.
Ian suggested ‘may I have’, which is much better and is only one extra word.
However, we’ve settled on ‘I’d like’ which is more polite and hopefully will be easy to say.
The plan will be we’ll teach him to say ‘I’d like’ and then start giving him sunflower seeds and finishing the sentence for him so he’ll say ‘I’d like’ and then we’ll give him a sunflower seed and say ‘sunflower seed’. And then move on to other things one by one.
Who’d have thought that having a talking parrot would mean that we need to consider his politeness as well as his volcabulary!