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

61–70 of 119 posts

Re: More than eighty cultures still speak in whistles

#61

Post by yosito »

bradrn wrote: post #24
estebarb wrote: post #18

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…)

To me it literally just sounded like Spanish, but in a high pitched whistle. Some of the sounds don't reproduce 1:1 in a whistle, but the whistling is adapted to still sound similar and comprehensible. I thought I would be able to do this myself by whistling out Spanish words, but it appears that it takes some practice to make all of the correct sounds. I tried in English, Spanish and Hungarian and I'm only able to produce musical notes, not distinguishable letters.

Re: More than eighty cultures still speak in whistles

#62

Post by calvinmorrison »

Dumblydorr wrote: post #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.

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

Re: More than eighty cultures still speak in whistles

#64

Post by addingnumbers »

citrus1330 wrote: post #55
addingnumbers wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They call whistling languages "vestiges," a "protolanguage," and baselessly speculate that they originate from less-evolved primates. The writer's tone keeps reverting to subtly dismissive and colonialist.

The article actually says the exact opposite. Can you read? Here's the quote: "That doesn’t mean that modern whistled speech is a vestigial remnant of those protolanguages, Meyer cautions. If whistling preceded voiced speech, those earliest whistles wouldn’t have needed to encode sounds produced by the vocal cords. But today’s whistled languages do, which means they arose later, as add-ons to conventional languages,…

Yes, clearly they recognized the need to backpedal somewhat from their long string of intimations that these languages have savage and primal qualities.

Did you think that passage was a total non-sequitur? Are they cautioning you from believing something you would have no reason to believe? Or do you think they were aware they had unduly created that impression.

Re: More than eighty cultures still speak in whistles

#65

Post by newsbinator »

citrus1330 wrote: post #56
DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #2

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

If you read the article you would know. "Despite their interest to both linguists and casual observers, whistled languages are disappearing rapidly all over the world, and some — such as the whistled form of the Tepehua language in Mexico — have already vanished. Modernization is largely to blame, says Meyer, who points to roads as the biggest factor. “That’s why you still find whistled speech only in places that are…

> Modernization is largely to blame

I'd replace "blame" with "thank": the simpler languages can become, and the fewer of them in daily use we can get to globally, the better for the entire species.

I'd love an expressive and terse baseline human language.

No problem if people still use other languages too, for cultural or historical reasons.

Re: More than eighty cultures still speak in whistles

#66

Post by Baeocystin »

VBprogrammer wrote: post #44
vanattab wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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. Or you know... you COULD walk over to where she is.

Yeah, my partner's family have a "family whistle" which is often employed to find one another. It's useful but also feels a little disrespectful.

My parents had a 'if you hear this whistle, come here', which, depending on the sequence of tones, meant anything from '5 minute heads up before it is time to go' to 'literally drop what you are doing and run to this position'.

It wasn't disrespectful at all. It was a great way to communicate over wider distances than is possible with regular voice, and in retrospect it was impressive how little translation it took for all of us kids to understand which meaning was being conveyed.

Re: More than eighty cultures still speak in whistles

#67

Post by dugmartin »

Dumblydorr wrote: post #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.

If you want to see some fun dog training with whistles search for videos of sheep dogs or waterfowl retrievers.

My cousin trained a couple of black labs to be waterfowl retrievers. I saw him in training throw out a training "duck" and hold the labs at this side with just a look. Then he whistled and they took off. About 5 feet from the "duck" he whistled again and they stopped. The dogs wanted to get to the "duck" so bad they looked like they were vibrating. He kept them there for a good 30 seconds before whistling again to signal for them to retrieve it. It was pretty cool to watch.

Not quite as cool but we have a "shock" collar on our cat to keep him off the neighbor's porch furniture. Our neighbor is very, very allergic to cats. It is activated by a 10' diameter transmitter placed under their furniture and beeps like crazy for 10 seconds before it does anything - a couple of beeps sets my cat running.

For some reason (maybe after seeing my cousin do it?) I started doing a specific whistle pattern when the cat comes in the house with the collar on. That will now stop the cat dead in his tracks and he will wait for me to take it off. The reverse is true also - if he sneaks out of the house without it on I can do the same whistle and he will stop and wait for me to put it on him.

Re: More than eighty cultures still speak in whistles

#68

Post by xj9 »

newsbinator wrote: post #65
citrus1330 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you read the article you would know. "Despite their interest to both linguists and casual observers, whistled languages are disappearing rapidly all over the world, and some — such as the whistled form of the Tepehua language in Mexico — have already vanished. Modernization is largely to blame, says Meyer, who points to roads as the biggest factor. “That’s why you still find whistled speech only in places that are…

> Modernization is largely to blame I'd replace "blame" with "thank": the simpler languages can become, and the fewer of them in daily use we can get to globally, the better for the entire species. I'd love an expressive and terse baseline human language. No problem if people still use other languages too, for cultural or historical reasons.

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!

Re: More than eighty cultures still speak in whistles

#69

Post by [deleted] »

vanattab wrote: post #35
Dumblydorr wrote: post #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.

>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. Or you know... you COULD walk over to where she is.

[deleted]

Re: More than eighty cultures still speak in whistles

#70

Post by ckosidows »

VBprogrammer wrote: post #44
vanattab wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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. Or you know... you COULD walk over to where she is.

Yeah, my partner's family have a "family whistle" which is often employed to find one another. It's useful but also feels a little disrespectful.

My dad used to whistle at us all the time as children and he probably still does when I see him. I probably picked it up from him.

I whistled to an ex SO and they considered it disrespectful. I'm not sure I yet understand why it's disrespectful, not that I consider either opinion more or less correct. I just don't really understand that opinion.

Maybe someone can expand on it?

Post reply on HN