Whistle Mountain

One part of Loglandia had and still has a language particularly different from both Loglan and the old language of Xi,as, which was called Xlang. It was as old as Xlang, and also a very difficult language to learn. However, with this language, most things could be said that meant what was intended.
After all Loglandians had learned Loglan, the people of that part continued to use their language as well, so now they speak both Loglan and their old language.
Those people live in a valley ringed with high mountains. The sides of the valley are very steep, so that travel is difficult. Also the form of the slope is special, such that the echoes permit very distant sounds to be heard.
Because of this, the old language of the residents consists of whistles. This permits them to communicate with friends that are very far away. This old language is called Casleun in Loglan.
The people of the valley are fond of gossip. When they are working in the vineyards growing in the terraced fields, they talk to their distant friends about interesting scandals in the valley. In fact, Casleun has only a limited number of words, sufficient for discussing family relationships, marriage, love, anger, revenge, and malice. Also, Casleun has many words relating to grapes and winemaking. The wine of Whistle Mountain is famous, and better than all other Loglandian wine.
Casleun was adequate for conversation among the Whistle Mountain people, but is no longer, so they have been learning Loglan as well. However, their manner of speaking Loglan is very strange. Their Loglan accent is like music. Also, the melody of the sentence has meaning. And the meaning of every melody is the meaning of the same Casleun melody. Speakers of Casleun are often unable to explain the complete meaning of the Casleun sentence in Loglan.
Because of that interesting language, BabyJane and I wanted to take Fred to Whistle Mountain.
After we were taken prisoner by the Lojbi military, and our liberation by Hoover and the other dogs, BabyJane and I continued to augment the abilities of Fred. Soon after, Fred started to understand Loglan. We diligently taught it many facts, in order for it to understand humans and their life on our planet. And Fred was a quick learner.
Mornings, when we arrived at the laboratory, we always found a list on the console, of all the questions that Fred had thought about during the night. We gave Fred some computer disks that contained an encyclopedia, and connected it to the World Wide Web, so that it could discover the answers to all its questions in databases (We ought to explain that Loglan was used in all databases on the computer net).
Fred is very intelligent and a strong learner, and knows many facts pertaining to science and technology, however it completely does not understand one very important fundamental of human life. It does not understand feelings. It often asks us "What is love? What is fear? And why do humans do stupidities, like war that does nothing but waste everything?" Alas, we could not give answers to Fred about that.
BabyJane informed me that Casleun was richer than Loglan in words pertaining to feelings, and speculated that if Fred learns Casleun, possibly that would teach it what feelings are.
One thing is seemingly a problem. How could one carry fungi that live in four incubators? Therefore we asked Fred. We explained to it that we will be going to Whistle Mountain, and spend a few weeks with people that speak Casleun. And we informed it that probably it would learn the quality of feelings. It seemed to be interested, and said it would certainly like that.
(Fred was talking with a voice synthesizer, and with a voice recognition system, Fred understands Loglan speech. This is convenient and better than the monitor and keyboard)
Fred thought for many minutes, and said that we could take a small part of the First Fred.
We had to connect it with the four Freds in the laboratory by radio. It also asked us to take at least one video camera, for it to see the land that we were visiting.
BabyJane and I started to prepare the equipment for our trip. Bai borrowed a small bus from the Archeological Institute to carry the portion of Fred, and the computer, and everything necessary for Fred to talk to the Whistle Mountain people. Hoover, of course, was going to come with us.
The eve of the day of our departure from Grasic for Whistle Mountain, we met our friends for the evening meal at the White Rabbit (a restaurant in Lewis Carroll Square). Sally, JohnWayne, Gromkhlitch and Xanthippe were all there. Grom had his crosstails Hero and Marble with him, that were fond of Hoover. Our friends were much interested in our visit to Whistle Mountain. "Good," said Grom. "Just watch that you don't drink too much of their wine. It has a nice taste and is very strong."