Re:On a small Greek island, practitioners of an ancient whis...
by oh_sigh on Thursday February 08, 2018 @03:17AM
(#16330898)
No, this a language. You may be thinking of say written language which is an encoding of language sounds
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Re:On a small Greek island, practitioners of an ancient whis...
by lillesvin on Thursday February 08, 2018 @07:25AM
(#16331671)
This is most definitely not a language. The language is Greek, as the article also states: "It’s the same as modern Greek — the grammar, vocabulary, and sentence structure all remain intact — but the sounds come out in high-pitched musical notes." So you're just encoding modern Greek in a different way.
You could also call it a register (as the article does) and group it with shouting and whispering, I don't completely agree with that assertion but either way it's most certainly not a language on its own, it's a way of speaking Greek.
> written language which is an encoding of language sounds
That is absolutely false. Written language is _not_ an encoding of language sounds. The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is, but there's a pretty long way from written language to IPA. Written language is a beast of its own and it's lagging way behind spoken language, but it's not an encoding of language sounds. It's a way of encoding language, but phonetics and phonology has nothing to do with it.