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Smart Messages:
The Whistled Languages of La Gomera (Spain),
Antia (Greece) and Kuşköy (Turkey) – state of
research and open questions
Bettina Gartner, bettina_gartner@yahoo.de
Oliver Streiter, National University of Kaohsiung, ostreiter@nuk.edu.tw
Abstract
All around the world – in Europe as well as in China and South America – about 1% of the languages are not
only spoken, but can be whistled in certain situations. These “whistled languages” are an amazing and
extreme form of human communication that in spite of being a global phenomenon that has the potential
to shed light on the nature of the human language capacity and its origin, has been largely unexplored. Even
now, as most whistled forms are threatened with extinction, research has not been stepped up to analyse
and document these forms of communication and currently only the French bioacoustic Julien Meyer is
running a greater project on the topic. As a consequence, only a dozen out of the approximately 70 whistled
languages have been analysed at all. Completely unclear are the circumstances under which humans
developed a system that permits the translation of words of the spoken language into whistles. Obviously
there are some common features to the whistled languages described: They are located in mountainous
regions and dense forests where whistles that carry information over kilometres facilitate communication.
This however doesn’t fully explain why the phenomenon is limited to certain mountainous areas. Research
on whistled languages will thus have to extend the currently used linguistic and bioacoustic frameworks
and include sociolinguistic and socio-historical aspects related to the usage of whistled languages. We
propose to unite the different levels of description in a GIS (Geographical Information System) to explore
the reasons which have given rise to the genesis of whistles as a smart form of communication.
1. State of research
Whistled languages are languages which can, in addition to being spoken, also be whistled.
These whistles are, by and large, conventional translations of vowels, consonants or tones
into whistled modulations. Although these translations are conventionalised, they show traces
of iconicity. Thus high vowels of the spoken language are translated into high whistles and
low vowels into low whistles. In tonal languages the pitch level might follow the tones of the
language.
A whistled language is generally referred to by the name of the spoken language, e.g. Mura
Pirahã, but sometimes has its own name for the whistled form, e.g. the Spanish whistled on la
Gomera is called El Silbo. When a spoken language changes or is replaced by another language,
the whistled form is assumed to change as well, in the same way as German Braille changes
with the spelling reform. El Silbo thus shifted from the language of the Guanches in the 16th
century to Spanish. Although we know little about the relation between changes in the spoken
language and the whistled language, we currently fi nd no language that died in its spoken form
but continued to be whistled. Theoretically, however, this would be possible.
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