Kuşköy-Turkish Village

The language is associated with Kuşköy, a village in Turkey’s northern Pontic Mountains that has hosted a Bird Language, Culture and Art Festival annually since 1997. The language dates back 400 years, but the origin is still uncertain.

For three centuries, farmers living in the remote mountains of northern Turkey have communicated great distances by whistling. It’s a language called kuş dili that is still used to this day, though fewer people are learning it in the age of the cell phone. It’s also known as bird language, for obvious reasons.