
Whistled Turkish - gpvos
https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=43016
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rolleiflex
Oh wow, I am from the part of Turkey that this is from (i.e within 30-40
miles) and I had no idea - my impression was that they were just whistling
certain pre-mediated commands. Weird thing to see on Hacker News today, the
next time I hear one I’m going to hunt the guy down and ask me to explain.

By the way, just to give some context, this is what the place looks like - you
actually do need this kind of communication because you might be communicating
from hill to hill, with a very deep valley in between, so it’s impossible to
actually get closer and shout.

[https://www.google.com/search?q=rize+yayla&client=safari&hl=...](https://www.google.com/search?q=rize+yayla&client=safari&hl=en-
gb&prmd=imnv&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjKn5rt_8jiAhURCTQIHW7kCmwQ_AUoAXoECA0QAQ&biw=375&bih=553)

We have pretty decent LTE signal up there by now, but I guess old habits die
hard.

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gnulinux
Holy moly, that looks gorgeous.

~~~
tim333
It looks a bit like alpine meadows which have their own odd communication
system in yodeling.

>Most experts agree that yodeling was used in the Central Alps by herders
calling their stock or to communicate between Alpine villages (wikipedia)

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x3ro
Quite a similar thing exists on the Canary Islands in Spain, where I grew up
[1]. It was even taught in school, though I joined in too late and never
managed to get the basic whistling parts, which made the rest quite impossible
to learn :/

[1]:
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silbo_Gomero](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silbo_Gomero)

~~~
journalingfs
This is a fascinating part of linguistics that I never knew existed. I wonder
if it would be possible to get a whistling system like this to work for
English. I wonder if the feasibility of these systems to represent their
respective languages is tied to how many sounds are in those languages. I
looked it up, and both Spanish and Turkish have fewer sounds than English, but
in the case of Turkish, it isn't too many fewer (36 vs 31 according to the
source I found).

~~~
avh02
> I wonder if it would be possible to get a whistling system like this to work
> for English.

I'd find it interesting for any language as it'd probably work just as well
for people without a voice box - kind of makes you wonder why we evolved one.
Speed?

~~~
frobozz
The larynx allows us to firmly shut off our airway (far better than lips
alone) in both directions (unlike the epiglottis that just prevents
inhalation).

By firmly shutting off our airway, we can stiffen our bodies to facilitate
lifting.

The larynx is also a secondary safeguard against things getting past the
epiglottis.

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mrighele
Whistled Turkish is interesting indeed, since is an example of a language
where both sides of the brain are involved [1]:

"Whistled Turkish is clearly fascinating in its own right, but Güntürkün and
his colleagues also realized that it presented a perfect opportunity to test
the notion that language is predominantly a left-brained activity, no matter
the physical structure that it takes. That's because auditory processing of
features, including frequency, pitch, and melody—the stuff that whistles are
made of—is a job for the right brain."

[1] [https://phys.org/news/2015-08-turkish-notions-language-
brain...](https://phys.org/news/2015-08-turkish-notions-language-brain.html)

~~~
mizzao
Wow. Is this possibly similar then to how dolphins communicate with clicks and
intonations? Perhaps their language is much more complex than we even
understand.

~~~
NeedMoreTea
Wouldn't surprise me in the least. This whistling language puts me in mind of
the various African drum languages, of which the West African talking drums
are possibly most well known. They can send complex messages across many
miles.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talking_drum](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talking_drum)

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grujicd
There’s a beautiful Turkish movie with prominent use of whistle language. It’s
used a lot in that movie since main character is mute and thus uses it not
only for long distance communication but for everything. It’s called Sibel.

[https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8696440/?ref_=nv_sr_3?ref_=nv_s...](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8696440/?ref_=nv_sr_3?ref_=nv_sr_3)

~~~
k_sze
That... just blew my mind. It never occurred to me that mute people can still
whistle.

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therein
So I am a native speaker and turns out I can actually hear the words in these
whistles. Ask me anything.

~~~
ultrafez
Do you mean that the whistles sound like the Turkish words that they
represent?

~~~
therein
I have given it more thought and I think this ability to use whistles to
express the language might be due to how in Turkish we have syllables that are
very structured and with distinct sounds.

I tried to "whistle Turkish" and "whistle English" and noticed in English,
ambiguity emerged rather quickly. But with Turkish, words weren't as
ambiguous.

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ecolak
As the author of the Android app, it's pretty interesting and exciting to see
an article on this. The project was an attempt to save or at least document
this language which might go extinct soon, as many others in the region did.
If anyone is interested in learning more about the language or the project
itself, you can contact me and I can put you in touch with the project owners.

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asfodelsu
There is something similar in Greece

[http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20170731-greeces-
disappearin...](http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20170731-greeces-disappearing-
whistled-language)

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gnulinux
I'm wondering if this really is a relex of Turkish, or could be considered
some creole of Turkish and an independent whistling language. Turkish isn't
tonal, so the phonology is fundamentally different, which makes me (naively)
guess given enough time languages will diverge grammatically.

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shafyy
Here's a video of the Kusköy (translates to bird village) villagers whistling
the bird language (kus dili in Turkish, which means bird language):
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZg-
ku_w_1I](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZg-ku_w_1I)

Edit: Typos.

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aliswe
I'd just like to say that this is nothing one can understand without lots of
getting used to. I can't understand a thing!

