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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

#21

Post by lillesvin »

oh_sigh wrote: post #6
lillesvin wrote: post #4

Just a technicality really, but this is just an encoding of language — like Morse code or writing — it's not a language of its own.

No, this a language. You may be thinking of say written language which is an encoding of language sounds

This is most definitely not a language. The language is Greek, as the article also states: "It’s the same as modern Greek — the grammar, vocabulary, and sentence structure all remain intact — but the sounds come out in high-pitched musical notes." So you're just encoding modern Greek in a different way.

You could also call it a register (as the article does) and group it with shouting and whispering, I don't completely agree with that assertion but either way it's most certainly not a language on its own, it's a way of speaking Greek.

> written language which is an encoding of language sounds

That is absolutely false. Written language is _not_ an encoding of language sounds. The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is, but there's a pretty long way from written language to IPA. Written language is a beast of its own and it's lagging way behind spoken language, but it's not an encoding of language sounds. It's a way of encoding language, but phonetics and phonology has nothing to do with it.

Re: On a small Greek island, practitioners of an ancient whistling language

#22

Post by vageli »

INTPenis wrote: post #16
muse900 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> But even so, I just don't think whistling leaves room for enough nuances to carry on a normal conversation.

> But even so, I just don't think rapidly moving air over skin to induce vibration leaves room for enough nuances to carry on a normal conversation.

Ultimately, whistling is just the emission of sound. Given that we get by with throat-sounds, I'd bet that whistling language could be sufficiently developed to be capable of expressing complex thought. Both speech and whistling are just moving air.

Re: On a small Greek island, practitioners of an ancient whistling language

#23

Post by stavros »

I read the article and then listened to the whistles. Surprisingly (since the article said otherwise), they were rather intelligible. They don't use one whistle per letter, which would have been weird, because you don't just say letters when talking (like "aitch ee ell ell oh", you just say "hello").

Similarly, this just seems to be taking the cadence of speech and whistling it. I listened to the proverb whistle, and it "clearly" says "η ζωή είναι πολύ ωραία όταν μπορείς να είσαι αυτάρκης", which I definitely wouldn't have gotten if I didn't know what they wanted to say, but which is different enough from the English translation to show that I could actually derive information from it.

Overall, I don't think you can actually hold a conversation in it, it's basically like taking speech and encoding it in low-bitrate audio. Lots of nuance gets lost and you're left with the low-entropy signals, which are hard to disambiguate unless you know what they're saying.

Re: On a small Greek island, practitioners of an ancient whistling language

#24

Post by cetalingua »

Here is a question, how do they determine who is whistling to them if they do not see them? Is whistler's identity encoded in a whistle somehow? And if yes, then how? In cetacean whistles it is believed that dolphin's identity is not encoded in a whistle that is why they need signature whistles.

On a side note, whistling language and cetacean whistling are nice examples of convergent evolution, cetaceans also use whistles for long distance communication, and use other sounds like burst pulses for short distance comunication with animals nearby. Sociality is another common component.

Another amazing thing about whistled languages is that they are still closely linked to their language of origin. If the language is tonal, the whistle will follow their language melodic structure. If the language is not tonal , whistles will try to mimic vowel resonance and convey consonants via how they whistle, i.e abrupt changes.

Re: On a small Greek island, practitioners of an ancient whistling language

#26

Post by [deleted] »

zimpenfish wrote: post #20
jwilk wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[deleted]

Re: On a small Greek island, practitioners of an ancient whistling language

#27

Post by tdgs »

happy-go-lucky wrote: post #17
contingencies wrote: post #8

Anyone 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...

There's an article in the Greek wikipedia: https://el.wikipedia.org/wiki/%CE%A3%CF%86%CF%85%CF%81%CE%B9...

Re: On a small Greek island, practitioners of an ancient whistling language

#28

Post by [deleted] »

vageli wrote: post #22
INTPenis wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> But even so, I just don't think whistling leaves room for enough nuances to carry on a normal conversation. > But even so, I just don't think rapidly moving air over skin to induce vibration leaves room for enough nuances to carry on a normal conversation. Ultimately, whistling is just the emission of sound. Given that we get by with throat-sounds, I'd bet that whistling language could be sufficiently developed to…

[deleted]

Re: On a small Greek island, practitioners of an ancient whistling language

#30

Post by npapag »

lillesvin wrote: post #21
oh_sigh wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, this a language. You may be thinking of say written language which is an encoding of language sounds

This is most definitely not a language. The language is Greek, as the article also states: "It’s the same as modern Greek — the grammar, vocabulary, and sentence structure all remain intact — but the sounds come out in high-pitched musical notes." So you're just encoding modern Greek in a different way. You could also call it a register (as the article does) and group it with shouting and whispering, I don't complete…

The Greek language is very very close to an encoding of language sounds.
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