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.
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 :/
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).
That doesn't sound right. English, being a Germanic language, has bizarre amounts of vowels. Some interpret English to have >20 vowels alone, up to low 30s, highly depending on the dialect. And then it has ~24 consonants.
English has all consonants Turkish has, except [1] /c/ and /ɟ/ (also the highly debated Turkish phoneme /ɰ/ which does exist in some English accents). But English has many more consonants such as 2 dental fricatives. There are some Turkish accents with velar nasal (ng in siNG) but most Turkish accents lost this phoneme (only some southeast ones have it). And Turkish has only 8 vowels.
But note that, I think this is a bad example. English is a language spoken in a large geography and thus has many dialects. Turkish has fewer accents and thus less variability in phonology.
[1] Note that even /c/ and /ɟ/ exist in some dialects. Such as k in 'keen' can be pronounced as /c/
> 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?
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.
I knew about that one (I've been to La Gomera, wonderful island), but remembered wrongly that it was its own language; but indeed, it is apparently a kind of whistled Spanish.
The origins are, as far as I know, unknown but probably based on Guanche which was spoken there before the Spanish arrived. It was later adapted to Spanish. While I could never use Silbo actively myself, understanding it was not too difficult.
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."
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.
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.
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.
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.
Yes, exactly. They have the same ups and downs and you can hear the words in it.
First the sentence is said in Turkish and then "whistled" and I can hear the same sentence in the whistle. The way that it goes up and down, and the way that he stops and starts mirrors the words exactly and I can hear the words in it.
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.
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.
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
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=...
We have pretty decent LTE signal up there by now, but I guess old habits die hard.