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whistle languages and types of tones 4 1 2 non tonal whistle languages 4 2 sound production techniques 4 2 1 bilabial and labiodental techniques 4 2 2 physics 4 3 comparison with spoken languages 4 3 1 limited expressivity 4 3 2 lack of comprehension 5 list of whistled languages 6 see also 7 references 8 bibliography 9 external links toggle the table of contents whistled language 23 languages català čeština dansk deutsch ελληνικά esperanto español suomi français עברית արեւմտահայերէն bahasa indonesia italiano 日本語 한국어 bahasa melayu norsk bokmål polski português русский türkçe українська 中文 edit links article talk english read edit view history tools tools move to sidebar hide actions read edit view history general what links here related changes upload file permanent link page information cite this page get shortened url switch to legacy parser print export download as pdf printable version in other projects wikimedia commons wikidata item appearance move to sidebar hide from wikipedia the free encyclopedia emulation of speech by whistling those who are able to speak using whistled language often use their hands or fingers to modify the sound produced sfyria a conversation in the sfyria whistled language problems playing this file see media help whistled speech is a form of speech surrogacy in which whistling is used to mimic speech speakers of more than 80 languages have been found to practice various degrees of whistled speech most of them in rugged topography or dense forests where movement to carry messages is challenging and whistling expands the distance of communication 1 the practice is generally threatened by increased modernization and faster roads but successful conservation efforts are recorded 1 definition edit a whistled language is a system of whistled communication which allows fluent whistlers to transmit and comprehend a potentially unlimited number of messages over long distances whistled languages are different in this respect from free associative whistling which may be done to simulate music to attract attention or in the case of herders or animal trainers to transmit simple messages or instructions to animal companions generally whistled languages emulate the tones or vowel formants of a natural spoken language as well as aspects of its intonation and prosody so that trained listeners who speak that language can understand the encoded message whistled language is rare compared to spoken language but it is found in cultures around the world 2 it is especially common in tone languages where the whistled tones transmit the tones of the syllables tone melodies of the words this might be because in tone languages the tone melody carries more of the functional load of communication while non tonal phonology carries proportionally less the genesis of a whistled language has never been recorded in either case and has not yet received much productive study history edit because whistled language is so much rarer than standard vocal language or non verbal physical language such as sign language historical research on whistled speech is sparse in early china the technique of transcendental whistling or xiao was a kind of nonverbal language with affinities to the spiritual aspects of daoist meditation 3 the development of xiao as a practice and art form can be traced through the works of the western zhou dynasty and it was initially used to convey a sense of grief or to invoke the spirits of dearly departed loved ones by the time of the six dynasties in han china xiao had become a widely used complement to spoken language irrespective of social class 4 due to the shrill tones employed while whistling xiao was often used to punctuate intense feelings or reactions such as joy displeasure and surprise in the melpomene the fourth book of his histories herodotus makes a passing reference to an ethiopian tribe who spoke like bats 5 while travelling through the territory of an ancient tribe on the southern black sea coast in 400 b c e xenophon wrote in the anabasis that the mossynoeci inhabitants could hear one another at great distances across the valleys the same area encompasses the turkish village of kuşköy where whistled speech kuş dili is practiced today 6 in 1982 in the greek village of antia on euboea island the entire population knew the local whistled speech called sfyria 7 but only a few whistlers remain now 8 causes of whistled language development edit ecology edit whistled languages have naturally developed in response to the necessity for humans to communicate in conditions of relative isolation with possible causes being distance noise levels and night as well as specific activities such as social information shepherding hunting fishing courtship or shamanism 9 because of this usage they are mostly related to places with mountains or dense forests southern china papua new guinea the amazon forest subsaharan africa mexico and europe encompass most of these locations they have been more recently found in dense forests like the amazon where they may replace spoken dialogue in the villages while hunting or fishing to overcome the pressure of the acoustic environment 8 10 the main advantage of whistling speech is that it allows the speaker to cover much larger distances typically 1 2 kilometres 0 62 1 24 mi but up to 5 km 3 1 mi in mountains and less in reverberating forests than ordinary speech without the strain and lesser range of shouting more specifically whistle speech can reach a loudness of 130 db and the transmission range can reach up to 10 km as verified in la gomera canary island 11 the long range of whistling is enhanced by the mountainous 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 culture edit 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 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 12 in sochiapam oaxaca and other places in mexico and reportedly in west and southern africa as well specifically among the vhavenda 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 insurgencies in cuba during spanish occupation 13 they may be used for secretive communication among outsiders or others 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 13 documentation edit various documentation conservation and revitalization effort are ongoing in france the whistling of aas is being systematically audio recorded using open source lingua libre those recordings have been used to create an interactive maps of occitan villages names 14 characteristics of whistled languages edit tonal and non tonal whistle languages edit whistled languages differ according to whether the spoken language is tonal or not with the whistling being either tone or articulation based or both most whistle languages of which there are several hundred are based on tonal languages a way in which true whistled languages differ from other types of whistled communication is that they encode auditory features of spoken languages by transposing i e carrying over into a whistled form key components of speech sounds there are two types of whistled languages those based on non tone languages which transpose f 2 formants patterns those based on tone languages which transpose tonal melodies 15 however both types of whistle tones have a phonological structure that is related to the spoken language that they are transposing 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 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 13 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 different whistling styles may be used in a single language sochiapam chinantec has three different words for whistle speech sie 3 for whistling with the tongue against the alveolar ridge jui̵ 32 for bilabial whistling and juo 2 for finger in the mouth whistling these are used for communication over varying distances there is also a kind of loud falsetto hóh 32 which functions in some ways like whistled speech 16 tonal whistle languages and types of tones edit only the tone of the speech is saved in the whistle while aspects as articulation and phonation are eliminated these are replaced by other features such as stress and rhythmical variations however some languages like that of the zezuru who speak a shona derived dialect include articulation so that consonants interrupt the flow of the whistle a similar language is the tsonga whistle language used in the highlands in the southern parts of mozambique this should not be confused with the whistled sibilants of shona there are two different types of whistle tones hole tones and edge tones a hole or orifice tone is produced by a fast moving cylinder or vena contracta of air that interacts with the slow moving anulus of air surrounding it 17 instability in the boundary layer leads to perturbations that increase in size until a feedback path is established whereby specific frequencies of the resonance chamber are emphasized 18 an edge tone on the other hand is generated by a thin jet of air that strikes an obstacle vortices are shed near the point of disturbance in the flow alternating on each side of the obstacle or wedge 17 one of the best studied whistled languages is a whistled language based on spanish called silbo whistled on the island of la gomera in the canary islands rialland 2005 the number of distinctive sounds or phonemes in this language is a matter of disagreement varying according to the researcher from two to five vowels and four to nine consonants this variation may reflect differences in speakers abilities as well as in the methods used to elicit contrasts the work of meyer 8 10 clarifies this debate by providing the first statistical analyses of production for various whistlers as well as psycholinguistic tests of vowel identification non tonal whistle languages edit in a non tonal language segments may be differentiated as follows vowels are replaced by a set of relative pitch ranges generally tracking the f 2 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 sound production techniques edit see also physics of whistles speech production and place of articulation whistling techniques do not require the vibration of the vocal cords they produce a shock effect of the compressed air stream inside the cavity of the mouth and or of the hands when the jaws are fixed by a finger the size of the hole is stable the air stream expelled makes vibrations at the edge of the mouth the faster the air stream is expelled the higher is the noise inside the cavities if the hole mouth and the cavity intra oral volume are well matched the resonance is tuned and the whistle is projected more loudly the frequency of this bioacoustical phenomenon is modulated by the morphing of the resonating cavity that can be to a certain extent related to the articulation of the equivalent spoken form 9 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 13 bilabial and labiodental techniques edit there are a few different techniques of how to produce whistle speech the choice of which is dependent on practical concerns bilabial and labiodental techniques are common for short and medium distance discussions in a market in the noise of a room or for hunting whereas the tongue retroflexed one or two fingers introduced in the mouth a blow concentrated at the junction between two fingers or the lower lip pulled while breathing in air are techniques used to reach high levels of power for long distance speaking 9 each place has its favorite trend that depends on the most common use of the village and on the personal preferences of each whistler whistling with a leaf or a flute is often related to courtship or poetic expression reported in the kickapoo language in mexico 19 and in the hmong 20 and akha 21 cultures in asia physics edit 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 which is readily understandable since in most cases their only purpose is long distance communication 13 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 13 comparison with spoken languages edit limited expressivity edit 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 heavily tonal languages such as mazatec and yoruba a large amount of information is conveyed through pitch even when spoken and therefore extensive conversations may be whistled in any case even for non tonal la...