In ancient times, sailors heard strange, mournful music vibrating through the hulls of their ships. With no idea what it was, they invented tales of mermaids singing to them from the depths of the ocean.

It was not until the 20th Century that we discovered these underwater tunes were being composed by whales. And as we studied them, we found that whale songs are really not so unlike human languages.

Whales in different parts of the ocean develop their own "dialectsForms of a language used by a specific region or social group.".¹ They sing different songs to indicate their feelings: hunger, loneliness, and even grief for a loved one.

Sperm whalesThe largest of the toothed whales. They live in pods and can be up to 59 feet long. ' sounds, which are more like a series of clicks, are some of the closest to human language. Each community has a different set of clicks which they teach to their young - who, before they have learnt the right clicks, "babble" like human children.

And there is new evidence that they use something called "duality of patterning", where sounds that are meaningless by themselves are joined into meaningful words.

For example, the phonemesThe smallest unit of meaningful sound - that separates one word from another. "k", "a" and "t" don't mean anything individually, but together they mean "cat". In the same way, each click probably means nothing on its own, but together they form ideas.

For some time now, scientists have hoped we might be able to translate this language. But there is a problem.

We can work out the situations in which whales sing particular songs. But we cannot understand what they actually mean.

But all that could be about to change. One team of scientists thinks we can unpick the secrets of whale language using AIA computer programme that has been designed to think. . They call themselves the CetaceanAquatic, marine mammals, such as whales, dolphins and porpoises. Translation Initiative, or "CETI".

ChatGPTAn Artificial Intelligence chatbot released in November 2022. does not understand languages. However, it is capable of absorbing a vast number of words and predicting how they should be put in order.

That means whereas we can only make out the basics of a language that we do not understand, ChatGPT can mimic an entire conversation. And if we can train it to recognise enough clicks, it might be able to have a conversation with a whale. That is what CETI hopes to achieve.

Yes: We know that sperm whales communicate with each other in complex ways. If we can identify enough of their words, we might even be able to have a conversation with them.

No: Most linguists agree that animals do not have language. Only human beings do. They might have ways of communicating information to each other, but that is not the same thing.

Or... Just mimicking whale sounds would not mean we were talking to them. We can "talk" to cats and dogs, after all, in the sense that we can communicate our intentions to them. But they do not really "understand" us.