A whistled language is the use of whistling to emulate speech and facilitate communication. Generally whistled languages emulate the intonation, tones or vowel formants, and prosody of a natural language so that speakers of that language can recognize the speech melody of what is being said and thus understand the whistled speech. Whistled language is rare compared to spoken language, but it is found in cultures around the world. It is especially common in tonal languages where the whistled tones follow the tones of the syllables (tone melodies of the words). Intonation, in linguistics, is the variation of pitch when speaking. ... Tone refers to the use of pitch in language to distinguish words. ... Spectrogram of American English vowels [i, u, É‘] showing the formants f1 and f2 A formant is a peak in an acoustic frequency spectrum which results from the resonant frequencies of any acoustical system. ... In linguistics, prosody refers to intonation, rhythm, and vocal stress in speech. ...

Techniques

Whistled languages differ according to whether the spoken language is tonal or not, with the whistling being either tone or articulation based. It has been suggested that this article or section be merged into Tone (linguistics). ... Articulation may refer to several topics: In speech, linguistics, and communication: Topic-focus articulation Articulation score Place of articulation Manner of articulation In music: Musical articulations (staccato, legato, etc) In education: Articulation (education) In sociology: Articulation (sociology) This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists other pages...

Tonal languages are often stripped of articulation, leaving only suprasegmental features such as duration and tone, and when whistled retain the spoken melodic line. Thus whistled tonal languages convey phonemic information solely through tone, length, and, to a lesser extent, stress, and most segmental phonemic distinctions of the spoken language are lost. In linguistics, prosody refers to intonation and vocal stress in speech. ... This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ... Pitch is the perceived fundamental frequency of a sound. ... In linguistics, stress is the emphasis given to some syllables (often no more than one in each word, but in many languages, long words have a secondary stress a few syllables away from the primary stress, as in the words cóunterfòil or còunterintélligence. ... In linguistics (and phonetics), segment is used primarily “to refer to any discrete unit that can be identified, either physically or auditorily, in the stream of speech” (after A Dictionary of Linguistics & Phonetics, David Crystal, 2003, pp. ...

In non-tonal languages, more of the articulatory features of speech are retained, and the normally timbral variations imparted by the movements of the tongue and soft palate are transformed into pitch variations (Busnel and Classe 1976: v). Certain consonants can be pronounced while whistling, so as to modify the whistled sound, much as consonants in spoken language modify the vowel sounds adjacent to them. In music, timbre is the quality of a musical note which distinguishes different types of musical instrument. ... For other uses, see Tongue (disambiguation). ... The soft palate, or velum, is the soft tissue comprising the back of the roof of the mouth. ... Pitch is the perceived fundamental frequency of a sound. ...

"All whistled languages share one basic characteristic: they function by varying the frequency of a simple wave-form as a function of time, generally with minimal dynamic variations (but see Cowan 1948 see Mazateco), which is readily understandable since in most cases their only purpose is long-distance communication." (Busnel and Classe 1976: 32) FreQuency is a music video game developed by Harmonix and published by SCEI. It was released in November 2001. ... Waveform quite literally means the shape and form of a signal, such as a wave moving across the surface of water, or the vibration of a plucked string. ... The Mazateco language is the native language of the Mazatec peoples of Oaxaca, Mexico. ...

Different whistling styles may be used in a single language. 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. There is also a kind of loud falsetto (hóh³²) which functions in some ways like whistled speech.

The expressivity of whistled speech is likely to be somewhat limited compared to spoken speech (although not inherently so), but such a conclusion should not be taken as absolute, as it depends heavily on various factors including the phonology of the language. For example in some tonal languages with few tones, whistled messages typically consist of stereotyped or otherwise standardized expressions, are elaborately descriptive, and often have to be repeated. However, in languages which are heavily tonal, and therefore convey much of their information through pitch even when spoken, such as Mazatec and Yoruba, extensive conversations may be whistled. In any case, even for non-tonal languages, measurements indicate that high intelligibility can be achieved with whistled speech (90% of intelligibility of non-standardized sentences for Greek (Meyer 2005) and the equivalent for Turkish (Busnel 1970).) Phonology (Greek phonē = voice/sound and logos = word/speech), is a subfield of linguistics which studies the sound system of a specific language (or languages). ...

In continental Africa, speech may be conveyed by a whistle or other musical instrument, most famously the "talking drums". However, while drums may be used by griots singing praise songs or for inter-village communication, and other instruments may be used on the radio for station identification jingles, for regular conversation at a distance whistled speech is used. As two people approach each other, one may even switch from whistled to spoken speech in mid-sentence. For other kinds of drums, see drum (disambiguation). ... This page is about the West African poets. ... Station identification is the practice of any type of radio station identifying itself, typically with a callsign. ... A jingle is a memorable slogan, set to an engaging melody, mainly broadcast on radio and sometimes on television commercials. ...

Examples

The Silbo on the island of La Gomera in the Canary Islands, maintains the five vowels of Spanish, but reduces its consonants to four. The Silbo Gomero (Gomeran whistle) is a whistled language spoken by inhabitants of La Gomera in the Canary Islands to communicate across the deep valleys (barrancos) that radiate through the island (Busnel and Classe 1976: 1). ... La Gomera is the second smallest island of the Canary Islands in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Africa. ... The Canaries is the nickname of Norwich City FC. The Canaries is also the nickname of Hitchin Town F.C.. Capital Las Palmas de Gran Canaria and Santa Cruz de Tenerife Official language(s) Spanish Area  â€“ Total  â€“ % of Spain Ranked 13th  7,447 km²  1. ... Note: This page contains IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. ... In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a sound in spoken language that is characterized by a closure or stricture of the vocal tract sufficient to cause audible turbulence. ...

Other whistled languages exist or existed in such parts of the world as Turkey (Kusköy, "Village of the Birds"), France (the village of Aas in the Pyrenees), Mexico (the Mazatecs and Chinantecs of Oaxaca), South America (Pirahã), Asia (the Chepang of Nepal), and New Guinea. They are especially common and robust today in parts of West Africa, used widely in such populous languages as Yoruba and Ewe. Even French is whistled in some areas of western Africa. Central Pyrenees. ... The Mazatecan languages are a closely related group of highly tonal languages. ... Chinantec is a tribe that lives in Oaxaca and Puebla, Mexico. ... Catedral de Santo Domingo The Free and Sovereign State of Oaxaca or simply Oaxaca   is one of the 31 states of Mexico, located in the southern part of Mexico, west of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. ... South America South America is a continent crossed by the equator, with most of its area in the Southern Hemisphere. ... The Pirahã language is a language spoken by Pirahã people of Brazil. ... Chepang is the commonly used name given to an ethnic group living in central and southern Nepal. ...  Western Africa (UN subregion)  Maghreb[1] West Africa or Western Africa is the westernmost region of the African continent. ... Yoruba (native name ede Yorùbá, the Yoruba language) is a dialect continuum of West Africa with over 22 million speakers. ... Ewe is a Kwa language spoken in Ghana and Togo by approximately three million people (Capo 1991). ...

Usage and cultural status

In the Greek village of Antia, only few whistlers remain now (Meyer 2005) but in 1982 the entire population knew how to whistle their speech.

Whistled speech may be very central and highly valued in a culture. Shouting is very rare in Sochiapam Chinantec. Men in that culture are subject to being fined if they do not handle whistle-speech well enough to perform certain town jobs. They may whistle for fun in situations where spoken speech could easily be heard.

In Sochiapam and other places in Mexico, and reportedly in West Africa as well, whistled speech is men's language: although women may understand it they do not use it.

Though whistled languages are not secret codes or secret languages (with the exception of a whistled language used by ñañigos terrorists in Cuba during Spanish occupation (Busnel and Classe 1976: 22)), they may be used for secretive communication among outsiders or other who do not know or understand the whistled language though they may understand its spoken origin. Stories are told of farmers in Aas during World War II, or in La Gomera, who were able to hide evidence of such nefarious activities as milk-watering because they were warned in whistle-speech that the police were approaching (Busnel and Classe 1976: 15). In the context of cryptography, a code is a method used to transform a message into an obscured form, preventing those not in on the secret from understanding what is actually transmitted. ... A language game (also called secret language or ludling) is a system of manipulating spoken words to render them incomprehensible to the untrained ear. ... Terrorist redirects here. ... Map of the West Indies, Mexico and New Spain with Cuba in the center drawn by Herman Moll in 1736. ... Combatants Allied powers: China France Great Britain Soviet Union United States and others Axis powers: Germany Italy Japan and others Commanders Chiang Kai-shek Charles de Gaulle Winston Churchill Joseph Stalin Franklin Roosevelt Adolf Hitler Benito Mussolini Hideki Tōjō Casualties Military dead: 17,000,000 Civilian dead: 33,000...

Ecology

Whistled languages are normally found in locations with difficult mountainous terrain, slow or difficult communication, low population density and/or scattered settlements, and other isolating features such as shepherding and cultivation of hillsides (Busnel and Classe 1976: 27 – 28). The main advantage of whistling speech is that it allows the speaker to cover much larger distances (typically 1 – 2 km but up to 5 km) than ordinary speech, without the strain (and lesser range) of shouting. The long range of whistling is enhanced by the terrain found in areas where whistled languages are used. Many areas with such languages work hard to preserve their ancient traditions, in the face of rapidly advancing telecommunications systems in many areas. Lyskamm, 4 527 m, Pennine Alps A mountain is a landform that extends above the surrounding terrain in a limited area. ... In a draw in a mountainous region, a shepherd guides a flock of about 20 sheep amidst scrub and olive trees. ... A kilometer (Commonwealth spelling: kilometre), symbol: km is a unit of length in the metric system equal to 1,000 metres (from the Greek words χίλια (khilia) = thousand and μέτρο (metro) = count/measure). ...

Physics

A whistled tone is essentially a simple oscillation (or sine wave), and thus timbral variations are impossible. Normal articulation during an ordinary lip-whistle is relatively easy though the lips move little causing a constant of labialization and making labial and labiodental consonants (p, b, m, f, etc.) problematical(Busnel and Classe 1976: 3). "Apart from the five vowel-phonemes [of Silbo Gomero] — and even these do not invariably have a fixed or steady pitch — all whistled speech-sound realizations are glides which are interpreted in terms of range, contour, and steepness." (Busnel and Classe 1976: 8) In trigonometry, an ideal sine wave is a waveform whose graph is identical to the generalized sine function y = Asin[ω(x − α)] + C, where A is the amplitude, ω is the angular frequency (2π/P where P is the wavelength), α is the phase shift, and C... Labialisation is a secondary articulatory feature of phonemes in a language, most usually used to refer to consonants. ... Labials are consonants articulated either with both lips (bilabial articulation) or with the lower lip and the upper teeth (labiodental articulation). ... In phonetics, labiodentals are consonants articulated with the lower lips and the upper teeth, or viceversa. ... Semivowels (also called semiconsonants or glides) are vowels that function phonemically as consonants. ...

In a non-tonal language, segments may be differentiated as follows:

Vowels are replaced by a set of relative pitch ranges generally tracking the f₂ formant of spoken language.

Stress is expressed by higher pitch or increased length

Consonants are produced by pitch transitions of different lengths and height, plus the presence or absence of occlusion. ("Labial stops are replaced by diaphragm or glottal occlusions.")

In the case of Silbo Gomero, such strategies produce five vowels and four consonants. Spectrogram of American English vowels [i, u, É‘] showing the formants f1 and f2 A formant is a peak in an acoustic frequency spectrum which results from the resonant frequencies of any acoustical system. ... A term indicating that the state of something, which is normally open, is now totally closed. ... A stop, plosive, or occlusive is a consonant sound produced by stopping the airflow in the vocal tract. ... In the anatomy of mammals, the diaphragm is a shelf of muscle extending across the bottom of the ribcage. ... The vocal cords, also known as vocal folds, are composed of twin infoldings of mucous membrane stretched horizontally across the human larynx. ...

List of whistled languages and speaking ethnic groups

The following list is of languages that exist or existed in a whistled form, or of ethnic groups that speak such languages. In some cases (e.g. Chinantec) the whistled speech is an important and integral part of the language and culture; in others (e.g. Nahuatl) its role is much lesser.

• Americas
  • Mexico: Amuzgo, Chinantec, Ch'ol, Kickapoo, Mazatec, Nahuatl, Otomi, Tepehua, Totonac, Zapotec.
  • Bolivia: Siriono
  • Brazil: Pirahã
  • Alaska: Yupik
• Asia
  • Myanmar: Chin
  • Nepal: Chepang
  • Turkey: Kuskoy
• Europe
  • France (village of Aas, Pyrenees): Spanish language
  • Greece (village of Antia on the island of Euboea)
• West Africa: Bafia, Bape, Birifor, Bobo, Burunsi, Daguri, Diola, Ewe, Fongbe, Marka, Ngwe, Twi, Ule (among others).
  • Spain (La Gomera, Canary Islands): "Silbo Gomero"
• Oceania
  • New Guinea: Gasup, Binumarien

World map showing the Americas CIA map of the Americas The Americas are the lands of the Western hemisphere or New World consisting of the continents of North America[1] and South America with their associated islands and regions. ... Amuzgo is an Oto-Manguean language spoken in eastern Guerrero and western Oaxaca in Mexico. ... Chinantec is a tribe that lives in Oaxaca and Puebla, Mexico. ... Chol (or Chol)is a Mayan language used by the Chol ethnic group in the Mexican state of Chiapas. ... For the Tenacious D song, see Kickapoo. ... The Mazatecan languages are a closely related group of highly tonal languages. ... Nahuatl ( [1] is a term applied to a group of related languages and dialects of the Aztecan [2] branch of the Uto-Aztecan language family, indigenous to central Mexico. ... The Otomí are a Native American people living in the central plateau region of Mexico. ... The Totonac people resided in the eastern coastal and mountainous regions of Mexico at the time of the Spanish arrival in 1519. ... Zapotec refers to a native people of Mexico, their language family consisting of more than fifteen languages, and their historic culture and traditions. ... Sirionó (also Mbia Chee, Mbya, Siriono) is a Tupian (Tupi-Guarani, Subgroup II) language spoken by about 400 speakers (50 are monolingual) in eastern Bolivia (eastern Beni and northwestern Santa Cruz departments) in the village of Ibiato (Eviato) and along the Río Blanco in farms and ranches. ... The Pirahã language is a language spoken by Pirahã people of Brazil. ... Official language(s) English Capital Juneau Largest city Anchorage Area  Ranked 1st  - Total 663,267 sq mi (1,717,855 km²)  - Width 808 miles (1,300 km)  - Length 1,479 miles (2,380 km)  - % water 13. ... The Yupik or, in the Central Alaskan language, Yupik, are indigenous or aboriginal peoples who live along the coast of western Alaska, especially on the Yukon-Kuskokwim delta and along the Kuskokwim River (Central Alaskan Yupik), in southern Alaska (the Alutiiq) and in the Russian Far East and St. ... World map showing the location of Asia. ... Chin (Burmese: ; MLCTS: ) is one of the ethnic groups in Myanmar (formerly Burma). ... Chepang is the commonly used name given to an ethnic group living in central and southern Nepal. ... This article is 150 kilobytes or more in size. ... AAS is an acronym that may stand for: Academy of Applied Science Aeromedical Airlift Squadron American . ... Central Pyrenees. ... This article is about the international language known as Spanish. ... Euboea or Negropont (Modern Greek: Εύβοια Evia, Ancient Greek Εúβοια Eúboia; see also List of traditional Greek place names), is the largest island of the Greek archipelago. ...  Western Africa (UN subregion)  Maghreb[1] West Africa or Western Africa is the westernmost region of the African continent. ... Bafia is a town in the Mbam division of Centre Province, Cameroon, about 85 miles north of the countrys capital Yaoundé. It is the see of the eponymous diocese. ... Ewe is a Kwa language spoken in Ghana and Togo by approximately three million people (Capo 1991). ... Fon (native name FÉ”ngbe) is part of the Gbe language cluster and belongs to the Kwa sub-family of the Niger-Congo languages. ... Marka can be: The currency Marka, see Convertible Mark. ... Twi (pronounced chwee ) is a language spoken in Ghana by about 7 million people. ... La Gomera is the second smallest island of the Canary Islands in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Africa. ... The Canaries is the nickname of Norwich City FC. The Canaries is also the nickname of Hitchin Town F.C.. Capital Las Palmas de Gran Canaria and Santa Cruz de Tenerife Official language(s) Spanish Area  â€“ Total  â€“ % of Spain Ranked 13th  7,447 km²  1. ... The Silbo Gomero (Gomeran whistle) is a whistled language spoken by inhabitants of La Gomera in the Canary Islands to communicate across the deep valleys (barrancos) that radiate through the island (Busnel and Classe 1976: 1). ... For the fictional superstate in George Orwells novel, see Oceania (Nineteen Eighty-Four). ...

See also

• Musical language
• Language of the birds
• Solresol
• Talking drums
• Droids

This article needs cleanup. ... A language of the birds, a mystical, perfect or divine language, or a mythical or magical language used by birds to communicate with the initiated , is postulated in mythology, medieval literature and occultism. ... Solresol is an artificial language, devised by a Frenchman, Jean François Sudre, beginning in 1817. ... For other kinds of drums, see drum (disambiguation). ... Alternative meanings: Droids (cartoon) A droid is a robot, specifically the intelligent robots in the fictional Star Wars universe. ...

Sources

• Busnel, R-G. and Classe, A. (1976). Whistled Languages. New York: Springer-Verlag. ISBN 0-387-07713-8.

• Busnel, R-G. (1970). Recherches experimentales sur la langue sifflée de Kusköy. Revue de Phonétique Appliquée 14/15: 41-57

• Foris, David Paul. 2000. A grammar of Sochiapam Chinantec. Studies in Chinantec languages 6. Dallas: SIL International and UT Arlington.

• Meyer J. (2005) Typology and intelligibility of whistled languages: approach in linguistics and bioacoustics. Pd D dissertation. Cyberthese publication. Lyon 2 University.

External links

• A Ph. D thesis on whistled languages : Meyer J. (2005) "Typology and intelligibility of whistled languages" (summary and pdf)

• An international network of research and defense on whistled languages, whistled speech. With sounds to listen, research articles to download, animations, games The World Whistles Network

• A whistled conversation in Sochiapam Chinantec (SIL-Mexico)

• A concise message on the LINGUIST mailing list summarizing knowledge about whistled languages. Also contains a bibliography.

• A report from National Public Radio, Whistling to Communicate in Alaska, discusses the whistled language used by the Yupik Eskimos of Alaska.