parrots speaking human languages

Some years ago, there was a very unusual exhibition at a gallery in London:

Parrots speak lost rainforest tongue

Artist revives the language of a vanished tribe after 2000 years

Only three brains in the world can understand the language of the Maypure people, and two of them belong to parrots.

This week visitors to London's Serpentine Gallery will be able to hear Maypure spoken for, as far as anyone knows, the first time in Britain - albeit in a limited way, as parrots tend to have a limited vocabulary.

Parrots speak lost rainforest tongue | The Independent | The Independent

Here's another example:

The parrot who saved the Maypure lost language.

It sounds like an enchanted story, made up to capture the attention of linguistics enthusiasts around the world, but it's all true. The story we are about to tell has as its protagonist a rainforest parrot and his heroic quest that led him to "resurrect" an extinct language.

Everything began in the 18th century, when geographer and naturalist Von Humboldt set out for an exploration of South America. During his mission, Von Humboldt had the responsibility to collect as many samples and data as possible about different aspects of that corner of the world: climate, territory, culture and tribes with which he tried to communicate thanks to his knowledge, albeit basic, of Spanish.

Everything was going well and Von Humboldt was thrilled by the amount of information he had been able to collect, so he thought that his mission had exceeded expectations and could not have gone better. Until one day, in the middle of the jungle, he met a talking parrot.

At that time, while exploring a land that we all know today as Venezuela, he stayed as a guest in the village of a local tribe. This tribe owned many parrots that were raised and trained as pets, yet, that talking parrot in front of him expressed himself in a completely different language than the one that his fellow parrots had been taught.

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The parrot who saved the Maypure lost language.

There are interesting theories about the origins of human speech:

How human language could have evolved from birdsong: Researchers propose new theory on deep roots of human speech -- ScienceDaily

Frontiers | A Bird’s Eye View of Human Language Evolution | Frontiers in Evolutionary Neuroscience

How can parrots speak human languages?

Why parrots can talk like humans - YouTube

Why parrots can talk like humans | TED-Ed

They can be really quite impressive:

Parrot Speaks 12 Languages - YouTube

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