Breaking News English

An elephant in Korea has a language student. Koshik, a 22-year-old male elephant, is already fluent in "elephantese," but he is now to learn the Korean language Hangul. A report about Koshik was in the online journal "Current Biology". The author of the report is Dr Angela Stoeger-Horwath, who at the University of Vienna in Austria. Researchers said Koshik has been to human speech for many years and has slowly to copy it. He can now the Korean for hello, sit down, no, down, good, not yet, and yes. Dr Stoeger-Horwath asked 16 Koreans to listen to 47 recordings of Koshik. They could all what he was saying.

The researchers a few reasons why they Koshik can talk. One possibility is that he has a very close relationship with his trainer, Kim Jong-gab. Mr Kim often near Koshik to keep him company. The trainer to him every day, so Koshik copied what he . Another is that the elephant is lonely and wants to with people and have friends. The research team said the way Koshik sounds is very unusual - he uses his trunk to human speech. They said he is much better at vowel sounds than consonant sounds. Trainer Kim Jong-gab said he has one more phrase that he wants to Koshik - "Saranghae," or "I love you."