'Choa!': Asian elephant can talk

Seoul, South Korea (CNN) -- Korean is
considered one of the hardest languages in the
world to master, but an elephant in a South
Korean zoo is making a good start.
Koshik, a 22-year-old Asian elephant has stunned
experts and his keepers at Everland Zoo near
Seoul by imitating human speech. Koshik can say
the Korean words for "hello," "sit down," "no," "lie
down" and "good." His trainer, Kim Jong Gap, first
started to realize Koshik was mimicking him
several years ago.
""In 2004 and 2005, Kim didn't even know that
the human voice he heard at the zoo was actually
from Koshik," zoo spokesman In Cherl Kim said.
"But in 2006, he started to realize that Koshik
had been imitating his voice and mentioned it to
his boss."
His boss initially called him "crazy."
Koshik's remarkable antics grabbed the interest of
an elephant vocalization expert thousands of
kilometers away at the University of Vienna in
Austria.
""There was a YouTube video about Koshik
vocalizing, and I was not sure if it was a fake, or if
it was real," Dr. Angela Stoeger-Horwath said. She
traveled with fellow expert Dr. Daniel Mietchen to
South Korea in 2010 to test the elephant's ability.
They recorded Koshik repeating certain words his
keeper said and then played them for native
Korean speakers to see, if they were recognizable.
"It is, for some of the sounds he makes, quite
astonishing for how similar they are," said
Mietchen of the University of Jena in Germany.
"For instance the word 'choa' (meaning good) -- if
you hear it right after what the keeper says -- it's
quite similar."
The findings have been published in the journal
Current Biology this week and describe how
Koshik places the tip of his trunk into his mouth
to produce his convincing impression of a human
voice.
Koshik was born in captivity in 1990 and was
transferred to Everland Zoo a few years later.
From the age of 5 to 12 there were no other
elephants with Koshik at the zoo, and his only
interaction was with humans. The researchers
believe Koshik may have learned certain words
out of necessity "to cement social bonds."
Koshik is expected to draw quite a crowd when
the public sees him in the spring after
construction at the zoo is completed.