Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

More than eighty cultures still speak in whistles

smithsonianmag.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 119 posts

Re: More than eighty cultures still speak in whistles

#91

Post by mikestew »

onionisafruit wrote: post #34
AlwaysRock wrote: post #15

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.

I gradually lost the ability to whistle in my 30s. I never whistled very loud, but now it’s almost nothing.

I lost that ability in my 30s thanks to Bell's Palsy. I mostly recovered, but the nerves on the right side didn't completely recover enough for me to seal my lips well enough to do it anymore. After I wasted $35 on a chanter, my wife and neighbors were relieved to find out that I won't ever be able to play the bagpipes, either.

Re: More than eighty cultures still speak in whistles

#92

Post by France_is_bacon »

nathias wrote: post #87
France_is_bacon wrote: post #57

Here in the USA, just this past weekend, I spoke in a whistle to someone. They had their driver's side car door open, and they were in a parking space in a parking lot. Someone drove up and wanted to park in the open space next to them. The person with the open car door didn't see them. I whistled. They looked at me and I pointed with my chin to the waiting car. The person waved at me and closed her door. Maybe my wh…

You didn't speak to someone with a whistle, you communicated to something with a whistle without using a whistle (or other human language).

You say potato, I say potato. You say tomato, I say tomato.

If you never heard it, this is where it came from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7sbncTUZiGk

or this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qRrw2hDjnl4 actually.

Re: More than eighty cultures still speak in whistles

#93

Post by InitialLastName »

newsbinator wrote: post #72
xj9 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

more language diversity is more fun. common languages are boring. folks should learn more languages, rather than less. its good for your brain too. here's to another babel moment!

Learning a lot of complicated things is good for your brain, like programming in various languages or playing various musical instruments. It's fun too. But having a multilingual globe comes at a massive, immeasurable cost. One of the greatest forces to improve economic opportunity and equality in the history of the world would be if everybody suddenly agreed on one simple, terse, expressive human language and switch…

> one simple, terse, expressive human language

I suspect this is one of those "pick two, at best" situations.

Re: More than eighty cultures still speak in whistles

#94

Post by 0xdeadb00f »

Slightly related: I've always loved the clicking sounds used in a number of (South) African languages. Xhosa for example has 6 different clicking sounds [0].

It's so surprising to me that English and most other languages don't make use of any clicking sounds whatsoever.

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xhosa_language

Re: More than eighty cultures still speak in whistles

#96

Post by noobly »

nathias wrote: post #87
France_is_bacon wrote: post #57

Here in the USA, just this past weekend, I spoke in a whistle to someone. They had their driver's side car door open, and they were in a parking space in a parking lot. Someone drove up and wanted to park in the open space next to them. The person with the open car door didn't see them. I whistled. They looked at me and I pointed with my chin to the waiting car. The person waved at me and closed her door. Maybe my wh…

You didn't speak to someone with a whistle, you communicated to something with a whistle without using a whistle (or other human language).

What if his whistles really speak to me?

Re: More than eighty cultures still speak in whistles

#97

Post by gfaure »

0xdeadb00f wrote: post #94

Slightly related: I've always loved the clicking sounds used in a number of (South) African languages. Xhosa for example has 6 different clicking sounds [0]. It's so surprising to me that English and most other languages don't make use of any clicking sounds whatsoever. 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xhosa_language

English does use clicks, as paralinguistic sounds. The first paragraph of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Click_consonant has a couple of examples.

Re: More than eighty cultures still speak in whistles

#99

Post by wheels »

France_is_bacon wrote: post #57

Here in the USA, just this past weekend, I spoke in a whistle to someone. They had their driver's side car door open, and they were in a parking space in a parking lot. Someone drove up and wanted to park in the open space next to them. The person with the open car door didn't see them. I whistled. They looked at me and I pointed with my chin to the waiting car. The person waved at me and closed her door. Maybe my wh…

That's very, very different from whistled languages. In Silbo Gomero, one of the main examples here, there's a whistled equivalent to each sound in Spanish. The difference is approximately as far as waving-hands-to-indicate-something vs. full-on sign language (though sign-languages are genuinely separate languages, whereas this is just a different register of an existing language).

As it were, I've actually spent around a year on the small island of La Gomera, where Silbo Gomero comes from. All kids have it in school as an attempt to preserve it.

Re: More than eighty cultures still speak in whistles

#100

Post by calvinmorrison »

sethammons wrote: post #85
calvinmorrison wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I whistle at my SO all the time in the grocery store etc. Nobody else does it so if we're a few aisles apart usually i can just do the whistle and then we find eachother. Beats yelling like a moron

I text my wife to find them in the store; sometimes the received text sound lets me know where they are :)

Some say I'm still wandering the Wegmans, looking for sauerkraut until this very day
Post reply on HN