Whistled Turkish tickles both sides of the brain – Science Magazine

In a mountainous region in Turkey, the local population communicates through whistling, instead of using words. Science Magazine writes:

One of a handful of whistled languages throughout the world, whistled Turkish is still Turkish—it has the same words and the same grammatical structure—but it has a different physical form. A whistle replaces the voice, just as written words replace speech in languages around the world, “but a whistle also imitates essential acoustic cues of the voice,” says bioacoustician and linguist Julien Meyer of France’s National Center for Scientific Research in Bron, France, who was not involved in the new study.

Scientists have discovered that the brains of people communicating through this whistled language don’t show the typical left asymmetry observed in spoken languages. These findings could potentially inform treatments for people who have suffered left-hemisphere stroke.

Read more about this study and hear how the locals communicate through whistles by following the link below.

Original Source: Science Magazine.