I went to dog training and the coach was this old military kind of guy with cargo pants with one pocket full of sausages cut into pieces, all serious about dog communication.
The day before our "finals", he tells me: "You talk too much to your dog.", which I found hilarious.
I'm an introvert. I can easily go through an entire day without uttering a word, but he was right in some way. He would probably have preferred the dog to follow implicit commands just by look and sausages.
That's been working well for me through several generations of dogs. Not only do they understand a lot of English pretty well, they also seem to like being spoken too.
My theory: with you being the pack leader and them ringing the alarm, barking back is like calling the police, shouting help and the police shouting help back.
