Do you that there is a tribe somewhere in the globe that uses whistles to communicate. You wonder how this can happen and you are curious to know more about the whistled language. Let’s see.
Thank you for reading this post, don't forget to subscribe!In general, and before the invention of technology and other artificial means of communication, whistling was one form of fun. Some tribes in Turkey and Spain used it for more than that. Locals in hills and mountains can communicate with one another using whistles. To have a bigger picture, we have to understand what the whistled language is.
What is the whistled language?
The Whistled Language is a means of communication that replaced other known forms of interaction. There are almost twenty thousand people who know the whistled language. In La Gomera and El Hierro in the Canary Islands, locals communicate over long distances by whistling. This form of language is called the Silbo.
How and why was it developed?
The Silbo language was originally from North Africa. Peasants and farmers living in steep mountains opted for whistling as the most appropriate and efficient way of interaction due to long distances. It is seen as one of the social aspects, a form of solidarity, and uniqueness.
According to a study conducted by Meyer, whistles don’t echo as much as shouts, which means they will not scare their potential prey. For Meyer, singing and whistling both formed a sort of “musical protolanguage.”. Additionally, regions all over the globe where “tonal” languages exist, tend to produce whistled languages that replicate the melodies of the spoken sentences.
Research and The Whistled Language
The whistled language has made linguists study this unique form of communication and reflect on how old generations teach the offspring. Silbo or the whistled language can help researchers learn more about the origin of languages and the role of the environment in the advancement of human language. Al last, linguists discovered that people belonging to 80 different cultures worldwide have developed various whistled languages.
The extinction of the whistled language
Technological revolution and socioeconomic factors threaten the survival of the whistled language even though there are international calls to preserve it. Digital natives are no longer interested in it since mobile phones solve the obstacles of communication over long distances.
