Whistled Turkish tickles both sides of the brain
By Emily Underwood
17 August 2015 1:15 pm
Listen closely in Kusköy, a mountainous region of northeast Turkey, and you might hear something like this whistled phrase trill across a steep valley. What you hear is not birdsong, but a version of the Turkish language that is whistled instead of spoken, a method that can convey messages across distances of up to 5 kilometers. In kuş dili, or “bird language,” the phrase means “thank you very much” (çok teşekkür ederim in spoken Turkish). Now, a new study shows that the brain processes kuş dili very differently from spoken Turkish, a finding that challenges conventional wisdom about how language works in the brain. The research could also have implications for stroke victims suffering from language loss.
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