More Than 80 Cultures Still Speak in Whistles 51
An anonymous reader shares a report: Tourists visiting La Gomera and El Hierro in the Canary Islands can often hear locals communicating over long distances by whistling -- not a tune, but the Spanish language. "Good whistlers can understand all the messages," says David Diaz Reyes, an independent ethnomusicologist and whistled-language researcher and teacher who lives in the islands. "We can say, 'And now I am making an interview with a Canadian guy.'" The locals are communicating in Silbo, one of the last vestiges of a much more widespread use of whistled languages. In at least 80 cultures worldwide, people have developed whistled versions of the local language when the circumstances call for it. To linguists, such adaptations are more than just a curiosity: By studying whistled languages, they hope to learn more about how our brains extract meaning from the complex sound patterns of speech. Whistling may even provide a glimpse of one of the most dramatic leaps forward in human evolution: the origin of language itself.
Whistled languages are almost always developed by traditional cultures that live in rugged, mountainous terrain or in dense forest. That's because whistled speech carries much farther than ordinary speech or shouting, says Julien Meyer, a linguist and bioacoustician at CNRS, the French national research center, who explores the topic of whistled languages in the 2021 Annual Review of Linguistics. Skilled whistlers can reach 120 decibels -- louder than a car horn -- and their whistles pack most of this power into a frequency range of 1 to 4 kHz, which is above the pitch of most ambient noise. As a result, whistled speech can be understood up to 10 times as far away as ordinary shouting can, Meyer and others have found. That lets people communicate even when they cannot easily approach close enough to shout. On La Gomera, for example, a few traditional shepherds still whistle to one another across mountain valleys that could take hours to cross.
Whistled languages are almost always developed by traditional cultures that live in rugged, mountainous terrain or in dense forest. That's because whistled speech carries much farther than ordinary speech or shouting, says Julien Meyer, a linguist and bioacoustician at CNRS, the French national research center, who explores the topic of whistled languages in the 2021 Annual Review of Linguistics. Skilled whistlers can reach 120 decibels -- louder than a car horn -- and their whistles pack most of this power into a frequency range of 1 to 4 kHz, which is above the pitch of most ambient noise. As a result, whistled speech can be understood up to 10 times as far away as ordinary shouting can, Meyer and others have found. That lets people communicate even when they cannot easily approach close enough to shout. On La Gomera, for example, a few traditional shepherds still whistle to one another across mountain valleys that could take hours to cross.
Advanced whistling. (Score:3)
The teakettle species has raised this to a fine art, and even make tea while doing so.
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"The teakettle species has raised this to a fine art, and even make tea while doing so."
My co-worker has 2 front-teeth that beat every kettle when he speaks.
Use the force Luke (Score:5, Funny)
Does this study include R2 units?
People use the tool for the job. News at 11 (Score:2)
Whistles, Yodels, Hoots, Claps, Clicks and Snaps are used amongst most of our languages and cultures. We may not use them as the primary source but we still use them. We clap our hands to get peoples attentions, I often Snap my finger to get my Cats or Dogs attention, Referees often have a whistle to relay info to the sports teams.
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Because it is the communication tool for the job in that country.
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Because it is the communication tool for the job in that country.
There's a chasm of difference between a method for sound projection (and vague correlation with meaning, such as the ambiguity of the whistle blowing across sports) and the distinct transformation of spoken language into a symphony of sound patterns (like Morse code, yet more complex than simply the presence and duration of sound bits, but considerations for pitch as well).
Interestingly, you contradicted yourself (and corroborated the commenter's argument) by recognizing that most use sounds as supplemen
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Because it is the communication tool for the job in that country.
I communicated with somebody over a long distance today. I used a thing called a "telephone".
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In general, gestures and sound effects like claps are meant more to emphasize the words being spoken, and are not strictly required to confer meaning. Click languages and the like actually use these other sounds as actual phonemes; or word or word elements. They are part of the syntactical structure of the language. Not that gesticulation, clapping and whistling don't carry some meaning, it's just that they are more emphatic, whereas with groups of languages that use click consonants and whistles and the li
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There's kulning [youtube.com] in Norway and parts of Sweden. In medieval times cattle were driven to high inland pastures for the summer months and were tended exclusively by women, who developed vocal technique that cattle could call to their herd over long distances.
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Fascinating, and beautiful! That said: calling a cow, and carrying on a conversation with other people, differ by orders of magnitude in complexity.
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As others have said in response to you, clapping, hooting and using a whistle are orders of magnitude less complex than carrying on a conversation, whether by speech, signing, writing, texting, Morse code, signal flags, or...whistled languages. And for the record, there are said to be cultures where drumming has a similar function to whistling in these other languages, that is, one can converse by drums. Muinane (a language of southeastern Colombia) is one such language, although I believe drumming was us
Some women get pissed off when I communicate (Score:5, Funny)
Some women get pissed off when I communicate with whistles. The need cultural sensitivity training
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Some women get pissed off when I communicate with whistles. The[y] need cultural sensitivity training
Maybe try whistling in El Silbo rather than Incelese.
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I really wonder: When exactly did the act of telling a woman "You are beautiful." into an offensive act of basically abuse?
And why?
I only hear women complain "Well, when you hear it a thousand times a day, it gets annoying.". Which is understandable. But very analogous to Marie Antoinette complaining of having too much cake available. To a bunch of starving people.
"Oh noes! We got too much luxury! We poor poor things!"
You know what's hilarious? Have you ever seen a *woman* not getting any?
*They can't handle
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You're weird. You really should get out of your basement more.
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You need to be sure your amongst the correct cultural group - e.g. the Dockworkerese, Constructionsite-thals. Otherwise, your attempts at communication will just sound like gibberish to the females.
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You need to be sure your amongst the correct cultural group - e.g. the Dockworkerese, Constructionsite-thals. Otherwise, your attempts at communication will just sound like gibberish to the females.
You missed the memo. The current policy is that "diversity is our strength".
Telling me to "stay with my own kind" will get you sent to the diversity police for training in right-think.
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She's just from a place that communicates via kicks to the groin.
Re: Some women get pissed off when I communicate (Score:1)
Why say "still" ? (Score:3)
The word "still" implies that whistling is somehow inferior and will be superseded by something better ? This does not say that people only communicated by whistling but did so in some circumstances - eg when communicating over great distance.
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Yes, it does. Your understanding of communication has failed you.
"No, I really meant..." is an idiots argument. If it has two clear meanings that fit, either you meant both, or you suck at communication.
Like when I call you a moron; I mean both that you're mentally deficient, and also that I don't like you.
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My goodness, worked up a bit, are we? You should get out a bit, you know, see the world, get a life. And while you're at it, learn a new word.: can you say 'polysemy'? I knew you could!
For the record, nadass is at least partly correct: 'still' does not _necessarily_ imply (not "infer") inferior quality. It *can* be used that way ("Are you *still* being an idiot?"), but it need not ("I'm still working at being nice to people.")
Time-tested is a good thing to me (Score:2)
That's interesting that in your mind, that which "still" works will or should be replaced by something new, because the new thing is - new.
In my mind, it still works implies it's time-tested. It's well proven.
Hit submit too soon (Score:2)
In your mind, "still" means outdated vs "new and shiny".
I my mind, "still" means it's stood the test of time, it's reliable, vs an unproven new idea.
I suppose that's why I've been called a "conservative".
I tend to conserve what's known to work, rather than throw out what works to try something new that may or may not work.
* That, and I'm aware that most of the "new" political and economic ideas aren't new - you just don't see them much today *because they failed*. They've been tried for a century or so and
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Yes, I'm a racist because I refuse to be your slave.
We aren't your property anymore. Get over it.
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I think it's referring to how it hasn't died out in the age of telecommunications. One might expect this technique to be replaced by, e.g., cellphones or the internet.
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Actually, I did something unusual and RTFA. It's more to do with roads and deforestation. (Telecommunications wouldn't make much sense since these are spoken in rugged and remote places that wouldn't have access to such technology).
From the article:
Despite their interest to both linguists and casual observers, whistled languages are disappearing rapidly all over the world, and some — such as the whistled form of the Tepehua language in Mexico — have already vanished. Modernization is largely to blame, says Meyer, who points to roads as the biggest factor. “That’s why you still find whistled speech only in places that are very, very remote, that have had less contact with modernity, less access to roads,” he says.
Among the Gavião of Brazil, for example, Meyer has observed that encroaching deforestation has largely eliminated whistling among those living close to the frontier, because they no longer hunt for subsistence. But in an undisturbed village near the center of their traditional territory, whistling still thrives.
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Maybe it's like so many vanishing languages, kids just aren't that interested in using them as "civilization" encroaches.
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VHF has the disadvantage that as far as I'm aware, the transmitter and receiver cannot be made locally from local materials.
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I'd swear I'd seen a picture of a cargo cult 2-way radio somewhere, but now I can't find it in a web search.
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Indeed, and because the "still" condescension is used in a context of denigrating the speech methods of non-majority, indigenous, and economically disadvantaged peoples, I move that the editor that came up with the title for this article be immediately canceled, whoever he/she/they/ze/xe/xie/attackhelicopter/hamsandwich may be.
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Some linguistic artifacts are dying out. The phonology is getting simpler in the world's languages. And there is also the simplification of English morphology, well documented through the transition from Old English to Modern English.
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I am not aware of any evidence that phonology is getting simpler in the world; there are phoneme mergers, but also splits. And some "primitive" languages already have a small number of phonemes (Rotokas or Hawai`an), even while others have large numbers of phonemes (some of the !Kung languages). English is actually somewhere in the middle for number of phonemes.
As for inflectional morphology, English is certainly impoverished (not so in its derivational morphology, though), but some languages gain inflect
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"still" because it is on the decline, according to the article. Search for the line "Despite their interest to both linguists and casual observers, whistled languages are disappearing rapidly all over the world" for details.
wtf (Score:1)
an independent ethnomusicologist
I wonder if he also has a part-time McJob for money.
If you include politicos, then the USA too (Score:2)
...pretty much both political sides say nothing of actual meaning anymore, everything is just dogwhistles to their frothing bases, cueing them on what they need to be outraged about today.
The hills WERE alive with the sound of music! (Score:1)
The Sound of Music - the Documentary!
Inserting myself into the story (Score:2)
On La Gomera, for example, a few traditional shepherds still whistle to one another across mountain valleys that could take hours to cross.
I had a car like that once.
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In my dreams I often still do.
Does CW count? (Score:3)
Although it's trinary (dot, dash, space) and electrified, does CW count as a whistled language? I do notice a CW signal carries a lot further and can be picked up much better in noise than 'phone', due to practically the same effects compared to whisteled languages vs. spoken ones. You can also convey a large chunk of the linguistic spectrum with it, because for every Latin character, numeral, mark and even some accented vowels, there is a(n extended) Morse code for.
Also, what I heard from some experienced CW operators, they don't recognize CW as individual characters but as complete patterns of words, multiple words or syllables. Else they can't process the stream fast enough to understand and re-record the message. In our Amateur Radio dept. I know two guys that can consistently record > 100 words/minute.
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I think it should count as a language (or at least a way of communicating a language), although I would not call it whistled. Semaphore flags also. Of course both are ways of spelling, so they're a language--or a way of communicating a language--in the same sense that writing is. I do however wonder how deaf people who can read English do it; I presume they are not sounding out the words!
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They learn English the same way you do: associating a word with a concept. Sounding out a word was a crutch that helps when you are first learning to read words that match the spoken sounds you already knew. When you were a child, if you mother said you were going to the zoo you got excited. You knew what the word meant. Later you learned the printed word "zoo" meant the same as the word you ha