Comments on: the alphabet never sounded more beautiful

the alphabet never sounded more beautiful

nickyskye — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 08:26:31 -0800

Type a word to translate into birdsong.

Credits with the graphic designer's, Jason Gaylor's, free photoshop brushes. Bonus links, Nightingale's bookmarks: Translate into R2D2 language Learn things about the day you were born Scry, the crystal ball Send a singing telegram with a duck Sci-Fi sounds to download The kakophone

By: OmieWise

OmieWise — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 08:33:49 -0800

The R2D2 translator is cool, but in my Firefox on XP the nightingale page is all messed up.

By: DU

DU — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 08:35:36 -0800

I can't even load the nightingale page. Nor the duck thing.

By: Avenger

Avenger — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 08:37:42 -0800

I started to play around with this and suddenly realized that this would be an incredible covert communications device. Strategically placed loudspeakers emit birdsongs, which, when digitally decoded, reveal the message for the intended recipient. Nobody would ever be wise to it, since it just sounds like regular bird-chatter to everyone else. Also, the googleAd on the bottom of the page is for a "Free Avian Sexing Kit". Furries are everywhereeeeeeeee!

By: pmdboi

pmdboi — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 08:53:01 -0800

Avenger: Heh, I don't think that ad means what you think it means. I'm wondering about how the birdsong encoding works, actually. There doesn't seem to be any sort of one-to-one correspondence between letters and bird chirps, but words seem to code uniquely into birdsong, and changing one letter in the word (usually) only changes one part of the song. My best guess is that there are several chirps for each letter, and different occurrences of the same letter in one word receive different chirps. Very cool, in any case.

By: rtha

rtha — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 09:09:22 -0800

The nightingale page won't load for me, in either Firefox or IE, on my work machine (Windows). Oh - but it loads fine on my powerbook. Huh. Nobody would ever be wise to it, since it just sounds like regular bird-chatter to everyone else. Unless there happened to be some bird nerds around, who would then take note of the nightingale's song, realize that nightingales are not native to that region, and immediately get on the phone/internet to inform every other bird nerd in the area that a vagrant nightingale has been spotted (well, heard) and the area wouldsuddenly be flooded with people with binoculars and field guides. You don't want that - trust me! My name translated into nightingale is quite nice!

By: Cat Pie Hurts

Cat Pie Hurts — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 09:15:38 -0800

I was really hoping that the translations for "nightingale", "self" and "me" would be the same, but then I typed in zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz and almost had a seizure.

By: nickyskye

nickyskye — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 09:29:25 -0800

pmdboi, There is a one-to-one correspondence between letters and bird chirps. It may change somewhat though when one letter is next to another, or when a letter repeats. The letter j on its own is lovely or when used in the word jazz for example but the sound for j is different when put together as aj. Whatever, just fun. The alphabet is lovely. I once had a whistling thrush outside my window that sounded a lot like that. Bliss.

By: Brandon Blatcher

Brandon Blatcher — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 09:36:38 -0800

Jeez, R2, why are you cussing so much? The bird chirp translator and kakophone are TOO COOL. I could spend hours there.

By: miss lynnster

miss lynnster — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 09:56:16 -0800

Apparently my dog doesn't speak bird. I was asking her in birdsong if she had to go outside, and she just ignored me.

By: tiny crocodile

tiny crocodile — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 09:57:58 -0800

It's working for me. Thanks nickyskye! My recommended word is antidisestablishmentarianism.

By: nobody

nobody — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 10:18:34 -0800

From playing around with it a bit, I think there are just three sounds corresponding to each letter, chosen based not on what letters each sits next to, but rather simply whether the letter is at the beginning, end, or somewhere in the middle of your word. Still neat, I think.

By: nobody

nobody — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 10:25:26 -0800

My recommended word is antidisestablishmentarianism. Then I think I'd have to suggest Pseudopseudohypoparathyroidism.

By: oneirodynia

oneirodynia — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 10:32:15 -0800

Apparently my dog doesn't speak bird. I was asking her in birdsong if she had to go outside, and she just ignored me. The first thing I typed in was my dog's name, Soda Pop, and she didn't even wake up when it played. Someone needs to try this on their cat.

By: Brandon Blatcher

Brandon Blatcher — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 10:36:50 -0800

Someone needs to try this on their cat. How can you translate opening up a bag of food?

By: Soliloquy

Soliloquy — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 11:06:37 -0800

My cat is very, very interested in the translation of her name.

By: caddis

caddis — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 11:08:51 -0800

This is fun!

By: oneirodynia

oneirodynia — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 11:15:37 -0800

How can you translate opening up a bag of food? I AM MEOW MIX, HEAR ME ROAR

By: hurdy gurdy girl

hurdy gurdy girl — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 12:29:45 -0800

Very pretty! My cats are perplexed by this. They keep looking up at the ceiling when I play the birdsongs. But I guess that's where birds usually are--up high.

By: donpedro

donpedro — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 13:28:46 -0800

If you type in "so it goes," the first part of the translation sounds a little like "poo-tee-weet."

By: snarfodox

snarfodox — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 15:42:33 -0800

Floccinaucinihilipilification? (Not something I just engaged in, just a word to translate. A popular Mefi pastime.)

By: snarfodox

snarfodox — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 15:49:29 -0800

donpedro: haven't picked up that book for years, I think I will tonight, thanks.

By: flapjax at midnite

flapjax at midnite — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 15:55:07 -0800

Charming site. The audio quality is very good. I love bird calls. I am happy.

By: Smedleyman

Smedleyman — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 16:46:59 -0800

Great, now all the nightingales in the neighborhood are giving me dirty looks.

By: krash2fast

krash2fast — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 18:18:07 -0800

@snarfodox: Floccinaucinihiliplification? You just made my day. I actually bickered with my 11th grade English teacher over whether "antidisestablishmentarianism" was actually the longest (nontechnical) word in the English language. Antidisestablishmentarianism has 28 characters; floccinaucinihilipilification, 29. Trifling, I know, but quite amusing at the time!

By: Kattullus

Kattullus — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 18:28:10 -0800

What a lovely little toy! tiny crocodile: My recommended word is antidisestablishmentarianism. That was the very first word I tried!

By: gingerbeer

gingerbeer — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 21:23:42 -0800

The cat sitting next to me is thoroughly unconcerned, even when the nightingale sang her name. It's a lovely website - thank you.

By: hadjiboy

hadjiboy — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 01:20:28 -0800

nickyskye = Awesome links

By: tiny crocodile

tiny crocodile — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 07:38:40 -0800

Krash2fast: Yes, but floccinaucinihilipillification is a coined word. Antidisestablishmentarianism appears to be the longest non-technical, non-coined word. But it all sounds good in nightingale.

By: From Bklyn

From Bklyn — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 02:41:55 -0800

This is terrific. My phone rings to nightingale song now. Makes me happy every time it rings now. A vast improvement. Thanks.

By: Kattullus

Kattullus — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 06:21:50 -0800

What does your nightingale say, From Bklyn?

By: From Bklyn

From Bklyn — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 08:18:13 -0800

Well - I first tried out "fucking phone's ringing." Then, "phone's ringing asshole," also "fuck fuck fuck" and "shit fuck shit" and liked all of them a lot. Conceptually, I also really liked that the obscenity would be perfectly obscure - perfectly - and it would only sound pleasing and plangent and a bunch of other positive-denoting adjectives. There was something perfectly profane about that which I found pretty damn seductive. (Repetitive letter combinations or alternative letters also sounded nice. So I considered translating some ee cummins, line by line, and seeing how that sounded but, honestly, I'm not that ambitious and I was not sold the result would be any kind of discernible improvement or augmentation of the original.) Around the time I was thinking about ee cummins my beloved walked in and I showed it to her. After the novelty had eclipsed, and with her involvement I, naturally, ended up having it sing " -X- loves -Y-" where X is me and Y is her. 'Cause, you know, she's my girlfriend (actually, she's my wife too) and I like her and it made her smile. so, uh, how 'bout you?

By: Kattullus

Kattullus — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 10:53:11 -0800

Well, I have a hard time enough noticing that my phone is ringing when it sounds like a phone, so I'm not sure getting it to ring nightingale would improve on that. However, the idea of having a ringtone where a nightingale sings encrypted e. e. cummings* might be too cool not to do. I'll have to think about that, certainly. *I know Estlin and the whole Cummings family wanted his name written with capitalized initials but I just like the all-lowercase way better.