I have this bird I got a while ago. She kinda repeats stuff I say, but I don’t think she knows what she’s talking about. She’s told me to take my bass and stir completly. (My tv is timed to go on at certain times, sometimes cooking shows are on…) So are they just a fancy looking recorder for the time being?
Welcome to the boards incubus12.
Actually your bird is trying to confuse you and doing a damn good job.
On the other hand there isn’t an expression like “bird brain” for no reason. 
My bird (blue-front amazon) spends much of the day gabbering about nothing.
I don’ t have a clue what he’s saying either.
There have been some studies on parrot intelligence that suggests that some may understand what the words mean (or what they have been taught to mean) You can read about Alex the african grey parrot here
http://www.alexfoundation.org/research/articles/harvard/harvard.html
I have a red-lored amazon who has tons of character, but not much vocabulary. He always tells me bye-bye when I pick up my keys. And I get a hearty “Hello Harry!” when I walk in the room. (his name, not mine - silly birdie) So it would seem that he uses these words in the right context. Whether that means he understands these words or not is for greater minds than mine.
A friend of mine has an amazon (yellow-naped?) that will string and jumble his entire vocabulary together at times. I think he’s trying to impress you so that you go pay attention to him. In that instance, it would seem that he doesn’t understand a thing he’s saying, he just knows it gets him attention.
My Jardine’s parrot grew up in an antique store so he has a skill for pointless gab that sounds like it’s in context:
“HiiI! Hi? Hi!. Hi.”
Me: “Hi, Murphy. . .”
“How are YOU?!”
“I’m fin. . .”
“Whatareyou doing?”
Me:
Damnit, tab button. . . to continue the conversation:
Murphy: “Whadareyadoing?”
Me: “Looking for socks. . . you have no idea what I’m talking about.”
“Murphy a good BOY! [sees me putting on socks] BYE by-EE! See you later! [said in an overly chipper “I work in a shop” voice]” It’s totally routinized retail ‘conversation.’
It’s sort of uncanny, but yeah I think they just repeat phrases that sound meaningful. You can try to teach them something for a year and they won’t pick it up, but the first time you angrily say “No! Stop!” they’ll pick it right up and make it their new favorite phrase. I think that’s the problem with parrots picking up cursing-- people make it sound so INTERESTING.
We had a budgie once that could mimic a few dozen words and phrases; there was no doubt that he would match words to appropriate situations; he would consistently say ‘Night Night’ when we covered his cage, he would always say ‘Ouch! stupid bird!’ after nipping my earlobe and so on. None of this is necessarily evidence of intelligence though.
As he grew older, he would mix up words from his vocabulary at random ‘Sixty-eight squeak the hickory bird ouch!’ and so on, but he did invent the phrase ‘mouse bird!’ (taking the word mouse from a nursery rhyme he had been taught) - he would say this a lot when he was playing with bird-shaped toys (of which he had several), but when he played with other toys, he would just make up random phrases.
I think most birds have a sense of context, but not meaning. My little Hahn’s macaw knows that “hello” is a good thing to say the first time you see someone, and “bye bye” is a good thing to say when a coat is put on, and “night night” is a good thing to say when the lights get turned off. He also knows that it amuses people when he says things like “Oh, really?” and “That’s interesting” after they say things to him. I doubt he knows what the phrases mean, but he knows when people react best to him saying them.
To extend this topic, what about wild, uncaged birds & how are we defining language here? Birds commune in all sorts of ways! (Check Lorenz’s Ring of Bright Water for example, on Ravens). And then there is mimicry (cardinals/mockingbirds). I personally
wish I could learn how to speak parrot (or hummingbird or pelican, etc.) more so than it repeating my spoken words. OK this is wistful thinking. Nevermind.
Hahaha, that’s great guys. Yeah, my bird has her share of curse words, and whats really crazy is she sometimes sings some songs my band writes cause we practice at my house. How long does it take for a bird like a molocken cockatoo to learn more words? she only says hi, and she swore at me for the spurr of a moment…