An Elephant Learns to Speak (...well, imitate) Korean: Not an April Fool's Joke!

Well, the month of March flew by without a post on Second Language Stories. 😢

But to kick April off on a fun note, though not exactly in the spirit of April Fool's (this is real!), I wanted to share one of the neatest things I've read lately related to language, featured in Current Biology:

An Asian Elephant Imitates Human Speech

Long story short: An elephant in a zoo began to mimic human speech after becoming lonely due to separation from his previous elephant companions. He learned to mimic words that his trainers/caretakers would commonly use (e.g., sit, lay down, good, hello). Researchers analyzed the acoustics of the elephant's speech, and also asked humans to transcribe the words as a check on the elephant's intelligibility.

What made this article extra fun was that the elephant lives in South Korea's Everland Zoo (basically a zoo connected to Korea's Disneyland), so naturally he learned to mimic Korean words. You can listen to the audio at the link above. Honestly, some of the consonant articulations are a little rough, but what's pretty amazing is how Koshik (that's his name) is able to produce vowels- acoustic analyses show that they fall within the general range of human Korean speakers. Human listeners asked to transcribe Koshik's speech agreed on vowels 67% of the time! Listeners agreed on consonants only 21% of the time, though, likely due to Koshik's articulatory limitations- he has to stick his trunk in his mouth as a substitute for a human-like alveolar ridge (the part of your palate just a bit behind your top front teeth). Try sticking your finger in your mouth and use it to say "jo-ah" (i.e., make that 'j' sound by pressing your tongue against your finger)- this is basically what Koshik has to do.

Finally, it was a hoot to read about speech analysis methods commonly used in L1/L2 speech and pronunciation research being used with animals. If I ever go back to the Everland Zoo, I'll be sure to say "anyeong!" to Koshik and try to record his response.