This Village In Turkey Has Awed The World With Their Unique Way Of Communication

#1 "Bird Language"

Famously known as their own "bird language," Kusokay village, Turkey has their own means of communicating with each other. From young children to old people, everyone in this village communicates across the valley by whistling. It's not even a common non-verbal whistling, instead, these Turkish villagers express their words as a series of piercing whistles.

#2 Learning The Language From Their Grandparents

Talking about their unique way of communicating, a native villager Cakir explains how she learned this language from her grandparents. She says when she was young her grandparents passed the language on to her, "You might need to ask one of your neighbors, 'Can you help me harvest the corn tomorrow? Or, if there's a funeral, the family would whistle the news throughout the valley."

Cakir playfully also explained what one cannot talk through whistling, "The only thing you never whistle is your love talk," she says, laughing. "Because you'll get caught!"

#3 Fascinated By The Language

Fascinated by this unique bird language, a Turkish-German bio-psychologist, Onur Gunturkun. "I was absolutely, utterly fascinated when I first heard about it. And I directly saw the relevance of this language for science."

#4 Brain Asymmetry Research

Gunturkun has been working on brain asymmetry research, as it is known that spoken language is controlled by the left hemisphere of the brain while music by right, there might be some overlap but generally they are two separate pparts.

What astonished Gunturkun the most is how can brain process a language whose syllables are similar to whistled tones.

#5 Balanced Contribution Of Both Left And Right Hemisphere

After doing a series of experiments, Gunturkun concluded the villagers are using both of their hemispheres, "So in the end, there was a balanced contribution of both hemispheres. So indeed, depending on the way we speak, the hemispheres have a different share of work in language processing."

#6 It Can Be Helpful For Stroke Patients

Though Gunturkun's research does not have any solid base but the bio-psychologist wonders if a whistled language might be helpful to a stroke victim with left hemisphere damage who has difficulty processing spoken language.