Musical languages of the Piraha and Pericu
Hidden in the deep folds of the Amazon and the windswept tip of Baja California, two ancient peoples—separated by continents, oceans, and millennia—may share a story far older and stranger than we think. The Pirahã of Brazil, with their hauntingly musical language that sounds like the calls of rainforest songbirds, and the Pericú of Baja California, once described by Spanish missionaries as speaking in a style that was “sung or whistled,” represent two linguistic mysteries that refuse to fit neatly into the boxes of modern linguistics.
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