#whistled languages

[spaceintruderdetector]

https://archive.org/details/julienmeyerauth.whistledlanguagesaworldwideinquiryonhumanwhistledspeechspringerv

This monograph addresses a fascinating and little-known language practice based on whistling. Whistling is one of the multiple modes of expression for some local languages. Whistling does not replace but instead complements ordinary speech, often under dilferent circumstances. It profoundly modifies the phonetic system of the local speech: the voice is replaced by a whistle, which carries the informa¬ tion. This drastic transformation consists of the emulation of selected acoustic cues of standard speech. Therefore, whistled speech is adapted both to the structure of each language—namely its syntax, grammar, and phonology—and to the articu¬ latory constraints of whistling. The advantage of this procedure, from the user’s perspective, is not only a vastly increased audible range but also, under certain circumstances, a degree of secrecy toward outsiders. This work is a follow-up of a previous monograph on this subject by Busnel and Classe (entitled “Whistled Languages”) published in 1976. Thirty-eight years later, a great deal of additional research has been performed, and several discoveries have provided new insights into the phenomenon. As we will show, during the last 12 years, new instances of whistled languages have regularly been found, thanks to extensive fieldwork. Moreover, we now understand better the processes of whistled speech perception. However, with the modernization of the countryside throughout the world, the traditional activities that justify this special speech register are frequently disrupted, and whistled forms of languages have become endangered oral practices.

[spaceintruderdetector]

https://archive.org/details/communicationandcybernetics13professorreneguybusneldr.andreclasseauth.whistledla/page/n1/mode/2up

This monograph deals with curious and little-known acoustic systems of communication based on whistling that are in use at the present time in many parts of the world and have had, on the evidence available, even greater currency in the past. In spite of their wide distribution, they have not so far received the attention they might have been expected to attract: linguistically and in other ways they are most interesting. For it should be realized that they are much more than mere codes or conventional systems of signals; they function in exactly the same way as speech (in the sense we normally use the term), being in fact rather extraordinary realizations of the languages spoken in the re¬ gions where they occur. They utilize the vocabulary, grammar and, in many cases to a large extent, the phonology of the local speech. However their phonetic system is profoundly modified acoustically and (in some cases less so) from the point of view of articulation, because the glottal tone of every¬ day communication, the "voice", is replaced by a whistle which carries the in¬ formation. The advantage of this procedure, from the point of view of the user, is a vastly increased range as well as, under certain circumstances, a degree of secrecy.

[mlleclaudine]

We so often privilege individuals as the primary drivers of innovation. But what if technology is also self-organizing, developing as an evolutionary response to the environment? If we think of whistled language as a kind of technology, we have an excellent example of this self-organizing principle in the 42 documented whistled languages around the world.

As we noted in a previous post, reports of whistled languages go back hundreds of years in cultures that would have had no contact with each other: Oaxaca, Mexico, northern Africa’s Atlas Mountains, the Brazilian Amazon, northern Laos, and the Canary Islands.

These are “places with steep terrain or dense forests,” writes Michelle Nijhuis at The New Yorker, “where it might otherwise be hard to communicate at a distance.” Such is the case in the village of Kuşköy, in “the remote mountains of northern Turkey,” notes Great Big Story:

“For three centuries” farmers there “have communicated great distances by whistling. It’s a language called kuş dili that is still used to this day, though fewer people are learning it in the age of the cell phone.” Also called “bird language” by locals, “for obvious reasons,” this system of vocal telephony, like all other examples, is based on actual speech. Nijhuis explains:

Kuşköy’s version [of whistled language] adapts standard Turkish syllables into piercing tones that can be heard from more than half a mile away. The phrase “Do you have fresh bread?,” which in Turkish is “Taze ekmek var mı?,” becomes, in bird language, six separate whistles made with the tongue, teeth, and fingers.

The method may be avian, but the messages are human, albeit in simplified language for ease of transmission. In the video above Muazzez Köçek, Kuşköy’s best whistler, shows how she translates Turkish vocabulary into melodies—turning words into music, an act of coding without a computer.

That this bio-technological feat arose spontaneously to solve the same problem the world over shows how us how humans collectively problem-solve. But of course, individualism has its advantages. Despite the huge amount of data they gather on us, modern communications technologies have met one particular human need.

In Kuşköy, "bird language is rapidly disappearing from daily life," writes Nijhuis. "In a small town filled with nosy neighbors, texting affords a level of privacy that whistling never did."

[alittleflare]

Whistled languages

Okay????? So apparently people talk in whistles???? How GENIUS is that??? I actually never knew that such a language exists *mind blown* I have many questions. Do we use "speakers" when referring to the natives? Or do we say Native Whistlers? Are they considered "speaking" or not? What if someone cant whistle are they considered "disabled"? Did I even use the write word to describe it in my first sentence "talk in whistles"? Why didnt they use spoken sounds -if that's the right way to say it- instead of whistles? Were they oppressed or were some type of hunters??? What made them choose Whistling??????

*research begins*

[principleofplenitude]

Meyer has found that they typically rely on one of two strategies – both of which use changes in pitch create a kind of stripped-down skeleton of the spoken language. It all depends on whether normal, everyday speech is “tonal”. In some countries, particularly in Asia, the pitch of a single syllable in a word can change its meaning. As a result, the whistles follow the melodies that are inherent in any spoken sentence. But other languages – such as Spanish or Turkish – are not naturally tonal. In these cases, the whistles instead mimic the changes in resonance that come with different vowel sounds, while the consonants can be discerned by how abruptly the whistles jump and slide from note to note. Either way, the whistles lose many of the cues that normally help us to distinguish different words – and outsiders often find it almost impossible to believe they carry intelligible messages. Yet Meyer has found that fluent whistlers can decode the sentences with more than 90% accuracy – around the same intelligibility as speech. Meyer suspects that this relies on the same neural machinery that allows us to hold a conversation in a crowded room, or to make sense of a whispered message. “Our brains are really good at reconstructing words that have been a bit destroyed by noise or other distortions,” says Meyer. We can see the same in written messages, when the letters are all jumbled up or the vowels removed – yuor biran aumtoacitally flls th gpas.

“The people who speak in whistles” from BBC Future

[camlangsci]

Give a little whistle: what's in a language?

One of the linguistic stories that’s been doing the news round this week has been about the kuş dili language of Kuşköy in Northern Turkey. It’s one of several documented whistled languages, typically used by peoples living in mountainous or forested terrain to communicate over distances. Such languages aren’t the community’s only language, but are based on their spoken language, like Turkish. Now, the story this week didn’t concern the discovery of this language – researchers have known about it for decades. They were actually some new findings about how speakers’ (or whistlers’) brains are functioning when when they speak (or whistle). When we hear about such radically different linguistic systems from our own, we’re often amazed, and intrigued.  How is it possible? The interesting thing is that we are perhaps really asking: how is it a possible language? Because we have no doubt that it is a language. How do we know this?

Well, there are two ways of viewing language. One is the code-based model, in which language is based on association – between a signal and something in the world, and between a signal and response. The word ‘cat’, for instance, is associated with something in the world, namely all cats. Whistled languages are clearly possible from this perspective, because the whistles encode some meaning; they are associated with a meaning, which is something out there in the world, albeit out there in people’s minds. (And at this point lets not get into the debate as to how complex this system of associations has to be to qualify as ‘language’). Messages are ‘encoded’ by speakers and ‘decoded’ by hearers.

CC Living in Monrovia

  The other view is the ostensive-inferential communication model. Sperber & Wilson, from a cognitive perspective, and Scott-Phillips, from an evolutionary perspective, would argue that this is the key to human communication – and human language. Indeed, it is what makes human language what it is, and so very different from any animal communication system. The idea is this: what enables us to use the conventions of language (the phonemes, morphemes, and syntax of English, or whatever other variety we happen to have learnt), is our amazingly prosocial nature. We are able to use signals intentionally to communicate a message. And not just with the intention that the hearer (or viewer, if we are making a gesture) understands our signal, but rather that they recognise that we intend to make a signal and that we intend for them to recognise our intention (that’s the ostensive-inferential bit).

This means, to take Scott-Phillips’ example, that tilting our coffee cup towards a waitress in a café whilst catching her eye is understood as a request for a top-up; tilting our cup as a result of an animated discussion with our companion, on the other hand, is not taken by the waitress as any sort of communication on our part. When we use language, it’s just the same. Language (words and grammar) lets us get across much more precisely and extensively our meaning, but it is always underdetermined (unlike mathematical languages, for instance) – we can never articulate every single aspect of meaning that we intend to communicate in that context, and frequently we don’t even try, knowing that our interlocutor can ‘fill in the rest’.

CC James Broad

So, back to our whistled languages. We recognise them as languages because they do use a complex inventory of sounds and structure to encode a message (the code aspect of language), and because they are used as language (the ostensive-inferential aspect). The whistled messages are intentionally directed to a hearer for them to recognise the whistler’s intention and their intended meaning. (And, incidentally, if you wanted to say that they aren’t languages proper, this still makes them much more like language then other animal communication systems, just as with our gestures).

If you’ve still got a minute, why not watch the video of some kuş dili whistlers here, and appreciate what an ingenious linguistic adaptation it is!

  References Scott-Phillips, T. (2014). Speaking Our Minds: Why human communication is different, and how language evolved to make it special. Palgrave MacMillan. Sperber, D., & Wilson, D. (1995). Relevance: Communication and Cognition.

Give a little whistle: what’s in a language? was originally published on CamLangSci

[wordthoughtsblog]

The Whistled Language of Northern Turkey

The Whistled Language of Northern Turkey

I read a fascinating article in the August 17 edition of The New Yorker, about the small village of Kusköy, in Northern Turkey, where many inhabitants converse by whistling. Because the area is mountainous and in a dense forest, a whistle carries much farther than a shout. Whistled languages have been known for centuries (not to me, however): Herodotus wrote of an Ethiopian “bat language” and…

View On WordPress