Silbo Gomero: ‘Special and Beautiful’ Whistled Language(nytimes.com)
nytimes.com
Silbo Gomero: ‘Special and Beautiful’ Whistled Language
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/18/world/europe/silbo-gomero-canary-islands.html
13 comments
Whistled languages seem like a useful idea, but I can't find enough material to to anything more than say "oh, that's a neat thing that exists". In particular, many whistled languages seem to be transliterated (I know that's not really the right word but close enough) from "normal" spoken/verbalized languages with a loose mapping of sounds to whistles, and ever since I encountered them I've wondered if the same could be done for English. Unfortunately, there's not a lot of good material online describing how the sound mapping works, and what little there is assumes that you're a linguistic expert, so it just sits in the back of my mind as an interesting idea with no (good) path to realize it.
It seems to be a solution among pastoral cultures for long range communication. It probably arises as one shepherd whistles at another in their local language, and the other one whistles back "holy shit, that worked!"
I plan on trying it with friends and family next time we go fishing/camping/hiking. A little bit of practice and repetition should be all it takes.
I plan on trying it with friends and family next time we go fishing/camping/hiking. A little bit of practice and repetition should be all it takes.
What's the Unicode for a whistle?
The phonetics for whistling are the same as regular language, the vowels are just whistled instead of vocalized.
I had the opportunity to experience Silbo Gomero first hand - at least the version they show off to tourists on a tour. It’s a unique language that was nearly lost.
If you visit the Canary Islands I highly recommend to check it out.
If you visit the Canary Islands I highly recommend to check it out.
It's worth noting that La Gomera is quite far from the more western islands: Gran Canaria, Fuerteventura and Lanzarote. Visitors staying on those islands might need to plan their La Gomera visit ahead of traveling to the canaries.
flew to Tenerife in 2019 and took a ferry to La Gomera, wasn't big deal to do so. Then just rent a car and travel around the island by yourself. Fortunately, I was able to experience the language myself when I hiked to Mirador de Abrante. The old dock for banana ships (or at least what's left of it) is also well worth seeing (Pescante de Hermigua). I could talk for hours about my stay there, an incredibly beautiful place.
wonder if something like this can be used to facilitate human-bird communication
La Gomera, Romanian indepedent movie, is based on this. The director learned about the whistling lunguage and then, for almost a decade, looked fot ways to transform it into a movie.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7921248/
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7921248/
There is a nice song about it (in french): https://youtu.be/jAlnL8JHetY
https://open.spotify.com/track/5LI0bvOOWBZurxNuO8su1S
A little experimentation and I found I can whistle quite a few English words, so it's probably a matter of acclimation to vocabulary limits and practice among enough individuals that things become standardized. Using things unique to whistling could augment vocabulary or add nuance, but I don't see any reason straight US English (or other languages) couldn't be used.
I could be way off base, but this is a pretty cool language format.