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More than eighty cultures still speak in whistles

smithsonianmag.com

21–30 of 119 posts

Re: More than eighty cultures still speak in whistles

#21

Anyone learn to whistle, in any way or form, later in life? I've always wanted to but never been able to. I've tried a few types of whistles. The closest I've gotten is some quasi duck calls using my hands and whistling with the help of an acorn.

If you can't whistle, there's a way to use an acorn or a bottle cap to do so. I can whistle, but not that loud, and often use a bottle cap to whistle loudly at venues. https://youtu.be/tydJLavu8Fc

Re: More than eighty cultures still speak in whistles

#23

There are no IPA keys for whistling.

Sure there are: [s͎˩˧˥˧˨˦˥˧˥˧˨˦] and so on. But really I see no reason why musical notation wouldn’t be sufficient.

(I should note that’s not [s]; it’s [s͎] with an arrow below it. It’s hard to tell the difference with the font on my screen.)

Re: More than eighty cultures still speak in whistles

#24

This is extremely cool!!! Also I find surprising that, as a Spanish speaker with no whistle-spanish training, I was able to understand most of the whistles.

Interesting! Spanish isn’t a tonal language, so how do you ‘translate’ the words into whistles? (And do you think you could do it without subtitles?)

(I should note I haven’t actually managed to watch the video yet, because my audio seems to be broken. Perhaps it would be obvious if only I could hear the whistles…)

Re: More than eighty cultures still speak in whistles

#25
Not the same as emulating vowels and consonants, but my dad used to whistle by with two fingers on his lips and making the loudest whistle. Either to get the dog's attention or my attention as a child.

It was a rural area and he used it to communicate (come back home, usually) and as a child I could tell by the sound if it was a normal 'come home' or one where I was in trouble 'come home right now!'

I now have a child of my own and kind of wish I could whistle like that, though the utility would be much less living in a city with endless forms of electronic communication.

Re: More than eighty cultures still speak in whistles

#26

Anyone learn to whistle, in any way or form, later in life? I've always wanted to but never been able to. I've tried a few types of whistles. The closest I've gotten is some quasi duck calls using my hands and whistling with the help of an acorn.

Like everything else, practice. When I learned it, first few days no sound would come out. Then the occasional "accidental" half-whistle. Now I can whistle songs.

Re: More than eighty cultures still speak in whistles

#27

> "still speak in whistles" "still"? Why is having more degrees of expressiveness in a vocal language considered an anachronism?

Because languages gradually lose phoenetic features over time. Phonetic diversity is a primary method for determining the age of a language. Hawaiian is a recent language with just 8 consonants and !Kung is ancient with over 50 consonants. The same phenomenon occurs with DNA diversity. Here is an article with explanation:

https://www.languagesoftheworld.info/bad-linguistics/phonemi...

Re: More than eighty cultures still speak in whistles

#28
post #25

Not the same as emulating vowels and consonants, but my dad used to whistle by with two fingers on his lips and making the loudest whistle. Either to get the dog's attention or my attention as a child. It was a rural area and he used it to communicate (come back home, usually) and as a child I could tell by the sound if it was a normal 'come home' or one where I was in trouble 'come home right now!' I now have a chil…

Apparently that sort of whistling is also used for communication, at least if Wikipedia is to be believed [0] (or if I could track down the source, which I don’t feel like doing just right now):

> Sochiapam Chinantec has three different words for whistle-speech: sie³ for whistling with the tongue against the alveolar ridge, jui̵³² for bilabial whistling, and juo² for finger-in-the-mouth whistling. These are used for communication over varying distances.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Whistled_language...

Re: More than eighty cultures still speak in whistles

#29
I use whistling daily. I discovered my dog responds best to whistling, whenever he hears my whistle, he knows it's me and comes running. Now, I use that to my partner ironically, if I don't want to shout and hurt the vocal cords, just whistle and she knows her presence is requested.

Re: More than eighty cultures still speak in whistles

#30

Anyone learn to whistle, in any way or form, later in life? I've always wanted to but never been able to. I've tried a few types of whistles. The closest I've gotten is some quasi duck calls using my hands and whistling with the help of an acorn.

Here's how I whistle. Suck in your cheeks, like you're puckering for a kiss. Make sure the lips are a tad moist. Blow through the lip hole. It helps if you keep a tightness, or ambiture (sp?) which is how a horns or winds player would describe lip/cheek tightness. Inside, the tongue is resting against front teeth and a very light stream of abdominal air is supplying the whistle. Any luck?
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