I've witnessed a demonstration of a whistling "language" when visiting Tenerife. As far as I could tell the one whistled there was not a language in its own right but rather an encoding of phonemes into whistling sounds.
On a small Greek island, practitioners of an ancient whistling language
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Re: On a small Greek island, practitioners of an ancient whistling language
#12I saw this a few days ago on a Japanese TV show -- the host was traveling around the world trying to find places that had never been visited by a Japanese person before. He found a small town in Greece, but then was disappointed that there was a Japanese woman living there... but her husband pointed him toward this island, where he had been born and raised. They made a big deal about the whistling language and even h…
This has been making the rounds lately and also been on swedish TV. But my impression of it on Swedish TV was completely different from yours. Firstly when interviewing the whistlers you could tell that it wasn't a language. It was just a set of sounds they had taught each other for specific situations. When they were standing 20 metres from each other and tried to say things like "take off your hat" or "pick up the…
Just to give some context behind it.
The whistling is indeed word for word. In my village some of the over 40's still exchange whistles from time to time depending on their situation.
I am not the best at whistling, as I didn't have the nerve to learn it all, nor I communicated like that to my friends and family. Although I am able to understand some of it and get a few words depending on how clear the other person is when he is whistling. Some of the older folks whistle their words very fast, and the ones that can understand them are people that have been trained to listen to those whistles for most of their lives.
On the articles whistling on soundcloud I was able to understand 5/6 tracks. The alphabet both in the slow motion and in the fast version is pretty clear.
Disclaimer: I grew up partly in a village in Greece, where they do keep that form of communication. I recently returned to Greece and am permanently residing in that village. I am not fluent in the whistling language, but I know for a fact that there is an alphabet and proper words coming out of whistling.
Re: On a small Greek island, practitioners of an ancient whistling language
#13Similar language is also being used in northern Turkey: http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2015/08/whistled-turkish-tick...
Another article about the same thing: https://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/the-whistled-languag...
Re: On a small Greek island, practitioners of an ancient whistling language
#14I saw this a few days ago on a Japanese TV show -- the host was traveling around the world trying to find places that had never been visited by a Japanese person before. He found a small town in Greece, but then was disappointed that there was a Japanese woman living there... but her husband pointed him toward this island, where he had been born and raised. They made a big deal about the whistling language and even h…
Do you have a link or a name for the TV show?
Re: On a small Greek island, practitioners of an ancient whistling language
#15[deleted]
Re: On a small Greek island, practitioners of an ancient whistling language
#16Earlier quoted context omitted.
This has been making the rounds lately and also been on swedish TV. But my impression of it on Swedish TV was completely different from yours. Firstly when interviewing the whistlers you could tell that it wasn't a language. It was just a set of sounds they had taught each other for specific situations. When they were standing 20 metres from each other and tried to say things like "take off your hat" or "pick up the…
Just to give some context behind it. The whistling is indeed word for word. In my village some of the over 40's still exchange whistles from time to time depending on their situation. I am not the best at whistling, as I didn't have the nerve to learn it all, nor I communicated like that to my friends and family. Although I am able to understand some of it and get a few words depending on how clear the other person i…
Good insight.
Maybe those old folks grew up together so they have their own whistling dialect.
The report on Swedish TV did show school children learning the whistling language so I'd assume they'd all understand eachother. But even so, I just don't think whistling leaves room for enough nuances to carry on a normal conversation.
It seems to be more suited for commands or exclamations like "bring me a beer" or "rain coming".
Re: On a small Greek island, practitioners of an ancient whistling language
#17Anyone have a list of the other systems? Himalayan and Myanmar in particular.
Wikipedia has a list of whistled languages:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whistled_language#List_of_whis...
Re: On a small Greek island, practitioners of an ancient whistling language
#18BBC article on the same topic:
http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20170731-greeces-disappearin...
Re: On a small Greek island, practitioners of an ancient whistling language
#19Just a technicality really, but this is just an encoding of language — like Morse code or writing — it's not a language of its own.
The article says:
> Sfyria, […] is not technically a language; linguists refer to it as a speech registrar, like shouting or whispering.
I've never heard the term registrar (in the linguistic sense), and Google doesn't find anything relevant either, so I wonder if this is the correct one.
Re: On a small Greek island, practitioners of an ancient whistling language
#20Just a technicality really, but this is just an encoding of language — like Morse code or writing — it's not a language of its own.
The article says: > Sfyria, […] is not technically a language; linguists refer to it as a speech registrar, like shouting or whispering. I've never heard the term registrar (in the linguistic sense), and Google doesn't find anything relevant either, so I wonder if this is the correct one.
I think they meant "register" which is a valid linguistic term applied to this kind of thing.
eg. https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=XzzABgAAQBAJ&pg=PA1&lpg=... specifically calls whistled speech a speech register.