#silbo gomero

[admelioraii]

A mysterious whistle from the past, echoes in the mountains of La Gomera

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Mountain after mountain, valley after valley as far as the eyes can reach, this landscape keeps repeating itself infinitely.

These emerald green mountains and valleys with their constantly repeating pattern make up the roller coaster-like Canarian landscape. The landscape itself holds the secret and reason behind why the whistling language developed here. 

Without a direct way of communication due to the inaccessibility of the landscape one can easily  understand the need for a whistling language. It must have made daily life easier in a revolutionary way for the Guanches, the original inhabitants of the Canary Islands, in that time.

Studies show that external communication, between the islands, was scarce due to insufficient knowledge of sailing, as well as the internal communication, within an island, was also difficult because of the complexity and inaccessibility of the landscape before the arrival of the whistling language.

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The Canarian whistling language or the “silbo” is a tonal language , today practiced by many inhabitants in the Canary Islands.The reason for the language is to be able to communicate with others over large distances, through mountains and valleys. The ones practicing the language are known as “ whistlers “.

Any language can be transformed into the “silbo”, it is translated into tunes recognisables from a distance. 

From the beginning it was used for the original language of the native inhabitants the “Guanches” after the disappearance of the Tamazight or canarian Berber it has come to be used with the Spanish language.

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With the “silbo” from Gomera, it is possible to exchange messages in distances up to five kilometres! 

This whistling language uses six different sounds, two for vowels and four for consonants, with these sounds it’s possible to express more than 4.000 words.

As we will be discussing later on, there are also other whistling languages elsewhere. 

Some of these tonal languages have four sounds for vowels and four for consonants, thus a total of eight different sounds.

Common for all these languages is that the sounds are approximates to the original language, variations are common and confusions possible.

There is very little information available about the original language of the Guanches but we do know that it probably originated in North Africa.

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We also know that the whistling language was created by these native Canarian, as a tool of communication and it was originally used in Hierro, Tenerife, Gran Canaria and Gomera.

After the conquest of the Canarian archipelago, in the 16th century the last prehispánic natives in Gomera finally adapted the “silbo” to Spanish, the reason for this was most probably the extinction of their own language.

The “silbo” gradually disappeared from the rest of the island but still lives on in La Gomera, the second smallest island in the archipelago.

The whistling language had a much more profound impact here than in the rest of the islands and this proved to be the key to its survival.

Talking about survival, in the 20th century with the arrival of mobile telephones and other ways of communication in addition to emigration of the gomeran population in search for a better life there was a steep decline in the use of the whistling language.

In 1990 started a revitalization campaign led by the Canarian government including educational and legislative measures together with efforts of the population as a whole. These efforts resulted in great progress for the “silbo”.

The government adjusted the education adding the whistling in the educational system and made it compulsory, in 1999 they also declared the “silbo” patrimonial heritage.

A decade later the gomerian whistle gained world recognition when UNESCO registered it in the list of intangible cultural heritage.

Today, the whistling language is a mandatory subject in schools in Gomera with at least one hour of class weekly.

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Summary:

As of the report of UNESCO in 2009 it concludes that a big majority of the population in la Gomera understands the whistling language, especially those born before 1950 and the students attending school from 1999.

The “silbo” in Gomera coexist with other tonal languages in the world, of which we chose to mention those of Evian, a island in Greece and Kuskoy, in the east of Turkey furthermore a place in the French Pyrenees. 

Nevertheless the “ Gomerian whistle “ is the only tonal language to have been studied thoroughly, as well as the one with most practicants.

Tonal languages are interesting from the point of view of being simple ways of communication; it makes it possible for us to study how a language first appears and then how languages develop in general.

The recognition and prestige the Gomerian silbo has gained in the last years has had unexpected consequences. There are even competitions between native whistlers in Gomera to gain tourists' attention.

We can finally conclude that the efforts of revitalization of the “ silbo “ in Gomera has been highly successful. Until now the “silbo” has been passed on from generation to generation, we surely hope that it will continue that way and that we might be able to discover even more of the Guanches secrets!

[gwendolynlerman]

Exspaining Spain: Regions

Canary Islands (Islas Canarias)

The Canary Islands are divided into two provinces: Santa Cruz de Tenerife and Las Palmas. There are eight main islands, El Hierro, La Palma, La Gomera, Tenerife, Gran Canaria, Fuerteventura, Lanzarote, and La Graciosa. The capital cities are Santa Cruz de Tenerife and Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, respectively.

Architecture

The region’s traditional architecture is based on Andalusian and Portuguese styles. It is characterized by grand balconies, interior patios, wooden stairs, and colorful facades.

Climate

The predominant climate types are the tropical and desert ones, characterized by hot temperatures year-round. There are two seasons: wet and dry. The average annual temperature is 21.2 °C (70.2 °F).

Economy

The islands’ economy is primarily based on tourism, with twelve million tourists visiting each year. Other important economic activities include construction, as well as the cultivation of banana and tobacco.

Famous People

Benito Pérez Galdós - writer

Carla Suárez Navarro - tennis player

David Silva - soccer player

Mara González - radio host

Paola Tirados - synchronized swimmer

Sergio Rodríguez - basketball player

Gastronomy

The Canarian diet, influenced by the indigenous Guanches and Latin American cuisine, is based on a combination of meat and seafood. Typical dishes include papas arrugadas con mojo picón (boiled potatoes with a spicy red sauce), rancho canario (chickpea soup with lard, thick noodles, potatoes, and meat), pescado seco (dried fish), ropa vieja (chicken and beef with potatoes and chickpeas), and bienmesabe (almond paste with honey and sugar).

Papas arrugadas con mojo picón

Dessert with bienmesabe

History

5th century BCE: Carthaginians

1st century CE: Romans

1402: beginning of the Castilian conquest

1833: creation of the Province of the Canary Islands

1927: division of the archipelago into two provinces

1982: Statute of Autonomy

Languages

Spanish is the only official language. Canarian Spanish is similar to Andalusian and Caribbean Spanish. It is characterized by the use of ustedes for the second-person plural, seseo (the lack of distinction between /s/ and /θ/, both of which are pronounced [s̟]), aspirated /s/ at the ends of syllables, and regionalisms such as chola (flip-flop) and guagua (bus).

Silbo Gomero is a whistled register of Spanish used in La Gomera. It enables messages to be exchanged over a distance of up to five kilometers. In 2009, UNESCO declared it a Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity.

Landmarks

There are four UNESCO World Heritage Sites: Garajonay National Park (La Gomera), Risco Caído (Gran Canaria), San Cristóbal de La Laguna (Tenerife), and Teide National Park (Tenerife).

Other notable landmarks include the Maspalomas Dunes (Gran Canaria) and the Timanfaya National Park (Lanzarote).

San Cristóbal de La Laguna

Teide National Park

[ayearinlanguage]

A Year in Language, Day 258: Silbo Gomero Silbo Gomero, literally "Gomeran whistle" is a whistled language spoken in La Gomera, a Spanish territory in the Canary Isles. When I say whistled language, I mean just that; it's whistled instead of spoken. Whistled languages are found on every continent all over the world. Their existence is normally motivated by a need to communicate across long distances and treacherous terrain, like the ravines of La Gomera. Unlike sign languages, which may be wholly independent from the surrounding spoken languagse, whistled languages are transcriptions of a spoken tongue, in this case a dialect of Spanish. Gomeran Spanish is said to be very melodic, though it is not a tonal language. Whistling lacks the range of possible timbres one can produce in normal speech. Vowels are generally analyzed more accurately than consonants, though as a whole Silbadors (speakers of Silbo Gomero) are able to communicate very effectively. Silbo Gomero is one of the best studied whistled languages, and there is a fascinating wealth of study into applying traditional phonologic principals to an entirely whistled system. I'll spare you the academia, but if you have a mind for phonetics I recommend looking it up. I may devote a post to it later on. Silbo Gomero was not the first whistled language on the island. The Spanish settlers picked up the skill from the Berber speaking Guanche people native to the region. The whistling is produced using a cupped hand, lip, and tongue movement, and requires incredible control of all the articulators and lungs, more so than the already impressive level of control needed for regular speech. As such, it is difficult to pick up the language without instruction, which resulted in a decline in speakers in the later half of the 20th century, though most Gomerans could still understand it. Around the turn of the 21st century interest and prestige was restored to the practice and it is now taught in Gomeran schools, and is classified by UNESCO as a masterpiece of intangible human heritage.

[allthingslinguistic]

"Whistled Languages" Reveal How the Brain Processes Information

Before the smartphone or even Morse code, some rural peoples “spoke” long distance by whistling. Linguists are racing to study the dying languages

One of the clearest, most extensive explanations of whistled languages around the world that I’ve ever read, in Scientific American by Julien Meyer. Excerpt:

The term “whistled language” is somewhat of a misnomer. Whistled speech, in fact, is not a separate language or dialect from a native tongue but rather an extension of it. Instead of using the voice to speak the Greek words Boró na ého omeléta? (“Can I have scrambled eggs?”), those same words are articulated as whistles. The sounds of the words just undergo a profound shift; they are generated not by the vibrations of the vocal cords but by a compressed stream of air from the mouth that swirls in turbulent vortices at the edge of the lips. Just as in ordinary speech, the whistler’s tongue and jaw move to form different words, but the range of movement is more constrained. All that changes is the pitch of the whistle; in contrast, when people speak, the timbre (what distinguishes one sound from another apart from pitch and loudness) may change, too.

In the end, the whistled words conveyed in the village of Antia are still Greek. Linguists sometimes liken a whistle to a whisper, in that both are alternative ways of speaking the same language without using the vibration of the vocal cords. [...]

Our inquiry so far has managed to locate about 70 populations who use whistled speech, most hailing from isolated mountainous or densely vegetated locations. That number is just a fraction of the world’s 7,000 languages, but it far exceeds the previously recorded tally. [...]

I was curious about how readily a person can learn some of the rudiments of whistled speech. Traditionally, the skill is taught shortly after a child learns to talk, but we decided to investigate the initial steps of whistled-speech learning in adults. I asked 40 university French- and Spanish-speaking students to listen to Silbo Gomero. We found that the students readily distinguished an obvious component of any Spanish whistled word—the vowels “a,” “e,” “i” or “o” (“u” is whistled as “o” in Silbo Gomero)—and that the Spanish students were a little more accurate than the French ones. Both groups of students categorized correctly the vowels far above chance, though not as well as a trained Silbo speaker.

Read the whole thing.

This description of whistling as like whispering made me wonder if you could also whistle English. I did seem to have intuitions about producing *something*, but I can’t vouch for its comprehensibility to other speakers. Please feel free to try it yourself and report back.

[admelioraii]

Un misterioso Silbo del passado, resuena en los montes de la Gomera

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Monte tras monte, barranco tras barranco, tan lejos como ven los ojos este paisaje se repite y se repite sin fin.

Estos montes y barrancos de un verde esmeralda intenso se  intercambian de manera perpetua formando el paisaje canario que nos hace recordar una montaña rusa. El paisaje mismo posee el secreto y la razón porque el silbo se desarrolló aquí.

Sin forma directa de comunicación y considerando la dificultad de desplazarse de un lugar a otro, uno instantáneamente comprende la necesidad del idioma del silbo.

Debería haber facilitado la vida laboral diaria de forma revolucionaria a los Guanches en aquella época.

Estudios enseñan que la comunicación externa, entre las islas, era escasa a causa de falta de conocimiento de navegar a la vez la comunicación interna no era nada mejor debido a la inaccesibilidad del paisaje, antes de la llegada del silbo.

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El silbo canario es un lenguaje silbado, practicado por los habitantes de canarias. 

La razón es para comunicarse por largas distancias, en terreno montañoso, a través de los barrancos. Los hablantes de la lengua están reconocidos cómo silbadores.

El silbo puede transformar cualquier idioma (no sólo castellano) a tonos reconocibles a distancia. El silbo fue originalmente transformado desde el idioma de los Guanches, los aborígenes de canarias el tamazight o Bereber canario, posteriormente con la desaparición de esta lengua codifica generalmente el castellano. 

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Con el silbo gomero es posible intercambiar mensajes o comunicarse hasta una distancia de 5 kilómetros.

El silbo emplea seis sonidos, dos de ellos vocales y cuatro consonantes, con estos sonidos es posible expresar más de 4,000 palabras. Otras lenguas silbadas, hablaremos de ellas más adelante, tienen cuatro consonantes es decir un total de ocho sonidos diferentes.

En el silbo gomero hay muy poca diferencia entre (o) e (u).

Como también ocurre en otras lenguas tonales el silbo mantiene aproximadamente la articulación de la lengua original, de forma que existen variaciones lo que hace posible confusiones. 

La información sobre la lengua original Guanche es muy escasa, pero se sabe que probablemente tiene sus orígenes en el norte de África de alguna tribu bereber, sin embargo el silbo fue creado por estos aborígenes canarios.

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Originalmente el idioma se hablaba en el Hierro, Tenerife, Gran Canaria y la Gomera, tras la conquista del archipiélago por los españoles ( en el siglo XVI ).

Los últimos Gomeros prehispánicos finalmente adaptaron el silbo a Castellano. La razón era sin duda la extinción del idioma Guanche.

La desaparición del silbo del resto del archipiélago y la razón porque todavía sobrevive en la Gomera está en la geografía de esta isla pequeña, que la distingue de las demás. 

Indiscutiblemente el silbo tenía un impacto mucho más grande en la Gomera , la segunda isla más pequeña del archipiélago,que en el resto de canarias, por lo tanto consiguió sobrevivir allí todos estos años.

Hablando de desaparición es cierto que más tarde, en el siglo XX con la llegada de otras formas de comunicación, cómo teléfonos  por ejemplo además de emigración a sitios con mejor situación económica, resultó en otra decaída del silbo Gomero.

En la década de 1.990 comenzó un esfuerzo de revitalización, esfuerzos del gobierno, legislativas y educativas, junto con esfuerzos de los ciudadanos mismos resultó en grandes progresos.

El gobierno canario reguló su aprendizaje en colegios y declaró el silbo Gomero patrimonio etnográfico de Canarias en  el año 1.999.

Una década más tarde el silbo gomero ganó reconocimiento mundial cuando la Unesco lo inscribió en la lista representativa del “patrimonio cultural inmaterial de la humanidad “. Hoy en día el silbo es una asignatura compulsiva en los colegios Gomeros, con un mínimo de una hora de clase por semana.

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Resumen: 

Cómo señaló en su declaración el año 2.009 la Unesco dice que una gran mayoría de las personas viviendo en la isla de la Gomera entienden el idioma del silbo especialmente los nacidos antes del  año 1.950 y los más jóvenes que han asistido el colegio a partir del  año 1.999.

El silbo Gomero coexiste con otras lenguas tonales en el mundo.

Otros sitios donde el silbo también tiene sus raíces es en la isla Griega de Evia, en Kuskoy (en el este de Turquía) y también en un lugar en los Pirineos franceses.

Sin embargo, el silbo gomero es el único idioma tonal que ha sido estudiado profundamente además de ser el idioma con mayor número de practicantes.

Los idiomas del silbo son interesantes en el aspecto de siendo sistemas de comunicación simples, nos ayudan estudiar cómo aparecen y luego se desarrollan las lenguas en general.

El reconocimiento y prestigio que el silbo ha ganado en los últimos años ha tenido consecuencias inesperadas. Hasta que hay competiciones entre los nativos por la atención de los turistas.

Finalmente podemos concluir que los esfuerzos de revitalización del silbo Gomero han tenido éxito. El silbo pasó de generación a generación, esperemos que siga así y que a lo mejor podamos descubrir todavía más secretos de los Guanches.

[telavivdelhi2]

The Ancient Whistled Language Of La Gomera - Silbo Gomero | Europe To Th...