Originally published at: http://boingboing.net/2017/01/13/the-amazing-whistling-language.html
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I’d heard of the Silbo language before, but not this one. Wikipedia tells me there are (or were) a bunch of these:
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There are a number of whistling languages. They tend to work best in mountainous areas. I read a book on one of them in the Pyrenees. Basically, the mountains are a high pass filter, so if you speak, more or less, but only emit the high tones, people can hear you pretty far away. Dense forest is a low pass filter, so you are more likely to get a language using the bass tones, such as the drum languages in various rain forests in Africa and Asia, the “talking drums”.
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I am not good at languages, but they facinate me.
If you like this sort of thing, check out this guys videos. He has some really interesting and fun ones about a variety of writing systems and languages. It is really neat how the connections work, as well as how some rulers and cultures shaped how we communicate formally.
This is probably his Magnum Opus thus far.
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What’s that, R2? Master Luke fell into a well?
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Basque sheepherders in NW Nevada used a whistle language when I was a kid in the '50s
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