The Ancient Whistled Language Of La Gomera - Silbo Gomero (VIDEO)

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Kullman
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The Ancient Whistled Language Of La Gomera - Silbo Gomero (VIDEO)

Postby Kullman » Sat Nov 26, 2022 8:04 pm

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TfGwFM9-wFk

So, I found this short documentary about the "silbo gomero", a whistled language used in La Gomera, one of the Canary Islands, and beeing in english (most content about this language are in spanish) I thought it might be interesting for most of the users of the forum.
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DaveAgain
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Re: The Ancient Whistled Language Of La Gomera - Silbo Gomero (VIDEO)

Postby DaveAgain » Sat Nov 26, 2022 11:15 pm

"Turkish bird language" is another whistling language.

https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 0&p=196265

EDIT
There's a good Guardian article on whistling languages Could whistling shed light on the origins of speech?.
Human languages are either tonal or non-tonal.

In tonal languages, such as Mandarin, a word’s meaning depends on its pitch with respect to the rest of the sentence. The vocal cords generate the pitch, or melody, which the oral articulators – including the lips and tongue – then mould into vowels and consonants, or phonemes. Since whistling doesn’t involve the vocal cords, only the oral articulators, whistlers of a tonal language must therefore choose which to transmit – the melody or the phonemes – and it turns out that they always choose the melody.

In non-tonal languages – which include English and most other European languages – they don’t have to make that choice because pitch doesn’t affect meaning, so they only whistle the phonemes.

There is also a musical form of whistling in both language types where the whistle follows a song’s lyrics by transposing their pitch. Thus whistled languages today comprise three types: non-tonal, tonal-melodic and musical.

“These different categories result from the complexification that came with increasing control of the vocal cords,” Meyer says. “But they may once have been combined into a single, rather formulaic protolanguage based on whistles.”
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Re: The Ancient Whistled Language Of La Gomera - Silbo Gomero (VIDEO)

Postby galaxyrocker » Sun Nov 27, 2022 12:03 am

I hate this title. Silbo Gomero isn't any 'ancient' language. It's literally just whistled Spanish!
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Re: The Ancient Whistled Language Of La Gomera - Silbo Gomero (VIDEO)

Postby Kullman » Sun Nov 27, 2022 8:30 am

galaxyrocker wrote:I hate this title. Silbo Gomero isn't any 'ancient' language. It's literally just whistled Spanish!


"Just"... The discussion about if a code, used to deliver a message, is or not a language, is quite old and doesn't go anywhere...
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Re: The Ancient Whistled Language Of La Gomera - Silbo Gomero (VIDEO)

Postby Dragon27 » Sun Nov 27, 2022 9:47 am

According to the info that I've just gleaned from wiki, there was once an actually different language - the Guanche language (from the Afro-Asiatic family) which has died out somewhere around the Early Modern Period after the conquest of the islands by the Spanish (in the Late Middle Ages) and the assimilation of the Guanche people. The Guanche language also had this whistled register which was used to communicate across the valleys and the ravines even before the arrival of the Spanish settlers, and this mode of communication was adapted to the Spanish language (creating the modern Silbo Gomero) in the 16th century.
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Re: The Ancient Whistled Language Of La Gomera - Silbo Gomero (VIDEO)

Postby Kullman » Sun Nov 27, 2022 10:56 am

Dragon27 wrote:the assimilation of the Guanche people


Say better annihilation of the guanche people... Canary island inhabitants are very proud of the guanche heritage, but the truth is than they were exterminated when the islands were conquered/colonized.
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