The Village That Speaks in Birdsong

In the steep, forested hills above the Black Sea coast, in the province of Giresun, there is a village whose name means "bird village". The name suits it for an unusual reason. For generations, its inhabitants have been able to hold conversations from one side of a valley to the other without raising their voices, because they do not speak at all. They whistle. The practice, known locally as "kuş dili", or bird language, grew out of necessity. In a landscape where hazelnut orchards cling to slopes and the nearest neighbour might be separated by a ravine, shouting is exhausting and travels poorly. Whistling, by contrast, carries remarkably well. A skilled whistler, using a finger in the mouth or cupped hands, can produce sounds that are intelligible at a distance of several kilometres, depending on the weather and the terrain. What distinguishes whistled Turkish from a simple signalling code is that it is genuinely linguistic. Rather than assigning arbitrary meanings to particular notes, whistlers reproduce the melody and rhythm of ordinary speech, translating the pitch contours of vowels and the interruptions caused by consonants into patterns of sound. A message such as "Come and eat" does not require a special vocabulary; it is simply Turkish, rendered in a different medium. Researchers who have studied similar traditions elsewhere, such as the whistled language of the Canary island of La Gomera, have found that experienced listeners process these sounds in the brain areas normally associated with speech rather than those used for music. Like many ancient traditions, however, kuş dili has been threatened by progress. The arrival of mobile phones made it easy to contact anyone, anywhere, so there was no longer a pressing need to master a skill that takes years of practice. Younger residents often left for the cities, and for a time it seemed likely that the last fluent whistlers would soon be silent. The tradition has since attracted international attention. In 2017, UNESCO recognised it as part of humanity's intangible cultural heritage, and local authorities introduced lessons for schoolchildren, as well as an annual festival. Whether these efforts will be enough to revive the language as an everyday means of communication remains uncertain; telephones, after all, are unlikely to disappear. Yet the achievement of the people of Kuşköy lies not only in the preservation of an old custom. It lies in the reminder that human language is more flexible than we usually assume, capable of travelling across a valley on nothing more than a breath.