Whistle Language?

[Francis M Hult]

Does anyone know more about this?  Is it for real? If so, any ideas on where to
look for research about it?

Francis

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=624&ncid=624&e=1&u=/ap/
20031116/ap_on_sc/save_the_whistle_1

By SARAH ANDREWS, Associated Press Writer

SAN SEBASTIAN, Canary Islands - Juan Cabello takes pride in not using a cell phone
or the Internet to communicate. Instead, he puckers up and whistles.


Cabello is a "silbador," until recently a dying breed on tiny, mountainous La
Gomera, one of Spain's Canary Islands off West Africa. Like his father and
grandfather before him, Cabello, 50, knows "Silbo Gomero," a language that's
whistled, not spoken, and can be heard more than two miles away.


This chirpy brand of chatter is thought to have come over with early African
settlers 2,500 years ago. Now, educators are working hard to save it from
extinction by making schoolchildren study it up to age 14.


Silbo ¡ª the word comes from Spanish verb silbar, meaning to whistle ¡ª features
four "vowels" and four "consonants" that can be strung together to form more than
4,000 words. It sounds just like bird conversation and Cabello says it has plenty
of uses.


"I use it for everything: to call to my wife, to tell my kids something, to find a
friend if we get lost in a crowd," Cabello said.


In fact, he makes a living off Silbo, performing daily exhibitions at a restaurant
on this island of 147 square miles and 19,000 people.


A snatch of dialogue in Silbo is posted at http://www.agulo.net/silbo/silbo.mp3 and
translates as follows:


"Hey, Servando!"


"What?"


"Look, go tell Julio to bring the castanets."


"OK. Hey, Julio!"


"What?"


"Lili says you should go get the kids and have them bring the castanets for the
party."


"OK, OK, OK."


Silbo was once used throughout the hilly terrain of La Gomera as an ingenious way
of communicating over long distances. A strong whistle saved peasants from trekking
over hill and dale to send messages or news to neighbors.


Then came the phone, and it's hard to know how many people use Silbo these days.


"A lot of people think they do, but there is a very small group who can truly
communicate through Silbo and understand Silbo," said Manuel Carreiras, a
psychology professor from the island of Tenerife. He specializes in how the brain
processes language and has studied Silbo.





Since 1999, Silbo has been a required language in La Gomera's elementary schools.
Some 3,000 students are studying it 25 minutes a week ¡ª enough to teach the
basics, said Eugenio Darias, a Silbo teacher and director of the island's Silbo
program.

"There are few really good silbadores so far, but lots of students are learning to
use it and understand it," he said. "We've been very pleased."

But almost as important as speaking ¡ª sorry, whistling ¡ª Silbo is studying where
it came from, and little is known.

"Silbo is the most important pre-Hispanic cultural heritage we have," said Moises
Plasencia, the director of the Canary government's historical heritage department.

It might seem appropriate for a language that sounds like birdsong to exist in the
Canary Islands, but scholarly theories as to how the archipelago got its name make
no mention of whistling.

Little is known about Silbo's origins, but an important step toward recovering the
language was the First International Congress of Whistled Languages, held in April
in La Gomera. The congress, which will be repeated in 2005, brought together
experts on various whistled languages.

Silbo-like whistling has been found in pockets of Greece, Turkey, China and Mexico,
but none is as developed as Silbo Gomero, Plasencia said.

One study is looking for vestiges of Silbo in Venezuela, Cuba and Texas, all places
to which Gomerans have historically emigrated during hard economic times.

Now, Plasencia is heading an effort to have UNESCO (news - web sites) declare it an
"intangible cultural heritage" and support efforts to save it. "Silbo is so unique
and has many values: historical, linguistic, anthropological and aesthetic. It fits
perfectly with UNESCO's requirements," he said.

Besides, says Cabello, it's good for just about anything except for romance:
"Everyone on the island would hear what you're saying!"