Unpopular Opinion
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I'm a bit of an oddball because I named a lemon tree and I talk with it. But even then, I don't think that this behaviour towards cats is silly, it's just humans harmlessly following their own instincts. Cats chase small things, spiders weave webs, and we humans talk.
And even if the response rate might go down, I don't care too much about it. I just make sure to include a few key words and/or sounds into what I'm talking, emphasise them when speaking with my cats, and make them iconic. At least for things that matter. (Granted, I use German with one of my cats, but that's for another reason - to keep myself from forgetting the language.)
Hey, has it been about ten seconds since you talked with your lemon tree?
No, I spoke with Malena as I was watering her, some ~4h ago, why?
I can totally respect that perspective.
My real motivation was simply stating I get far better results by simplifying the dialogue to something that is better understood. I find it super annoying when someone is yelling words across a house at a cat. Like all you are doing is saying "stay away from random yelling ape making random weird scary sounds." Just keeping it simple, conscious, and consistent with a cat's cognitive abilities can generate real results most people assume cats are incapable of doing.
Cats have sensitive hearing and hate loud noises, so it makes a lot of sense that a quiet whistle would work better than loudly calling out. Things like "pspsps" and "ksksks" get their attention too because it's not very loud but has a lot of high frequencies that they can hear well.
They seem to like when you talk to them in a calm voice. They might not understand sentences, but they do recognize sounds. They'll look at you funny if you suddenly start speaking a different language.
Ah, I get it. It looks for me like the "target" of your annoyance is that some people expect their cats to behave like humans, including understanding speech; that's far from true and it goes way past the human instinct that I mentioned.