Mariah will not repeat after you. She prefers to work on two-way dialog. She will attempt to answer questions meant for other people, and usually gets the right one-word answer. She may be using the asker's tone of voice to distinguish the expected or desired reply. She also provides the usual social acknowledgments during conversation -- yes, oh?, yeah, mm-hmm, ok, etc.

Some of Mariah's words and phrases are listed below. She usually delivers them with great gusto:

• Everybody loves Mariah. Can't help it.
• I love you.
• Come here.
• Come on.
• Step up.
• Yeah.
• What are you doing?
• Good morning.
• Good night.
• Mariah.
• Mariah bird.
• Mariah birdie.
• I'm a Myna bird. (learned from a myna named Sam)
• Want to go downstairs. (both as a query and the assertion)
• Ooh, baby. (sounding pretty much like Barry White)
• Hi cats! (she manages a pair of cats)
• Hello, Sebastian. (one of the cats)
• Stop it. (loudly, when visitors or family make noise)
• Oh boy.
• Girl? I love you. (she calls her female human "Girl")
• Hi Girl!
• Ouch. (after tweaking your finger a little hard, or bumping her own beak)
• Don't bite! (Often with Ouch, relieving you of the effort of saying same. Note that Mariah is actually very gentle, and is repeating training phrases before we can get them out. She is allowed to nibble fingers, cheeks, ears, etc of humans she likes -- but we warn her when things begin to get a little too ardent. Birds routinely nibble at each others' beaks and feathers much more strongly than our body parts can take comfortably)
• Woops! (usually delivered just after falling from her perch)
• Sorry. (usually with Woops after a clumsy performance)
• Sure.
• Good.
• Hi Cutie!
• Hi Cutie bird!
• All right.
• Nice scratch. (soliciting a scratch behind the head)
• Hello. (whenever the phone rings, also after imitating a telephone ring herself)
• Good Girl!
• Good exercise! (she says this after flapping wildly for a minute or so while grasping her perch)

This is not an exhaustive list. We will update it as she reminds us of her abilities. She also does a great many computer sounds and household appliance sounds, often to the confusion of nearby humans.

Mariah has provided the logo for, and is unofficial mascot for PMPro Prolog for OS/2. This is a computer language that is well-adapted to writing speech systems for computers. See the connection?

Send Mariah some mail if you like. Include your email address in the body of your note if you want her reactions.