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Unusual whistled speech may reveal what humanity’s first words sounded like
- tdeck 9y agoThe Pirahã language of South America can also be whistled or hummed, and has other interesting characteristics , like lacking words for numbers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirah%C3%A3_language https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirah%C3%A3_language
- Ericson2314 9y agoReminds me I still need to learn how to wistle :(
- YeGoblynQueenne 9y ago>> Herodotus described a group of cave-dwelling Ethiopians. “Their speech is like no other in the world: it is like the squeaking of bats,” he wrote. We can’t know for sure which communities he was describing, but Meyer says that several whistled languages can still be heard in Ethiopia’s Omo Valley. In Herodotus' writings, like in many other ancient sources, the name "Aethiopian" (and not Ethiopian) was used for people from Sub-Saharan Africa: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aethiopia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aethiopia If people in Ethiopia have a whistled language it has probably nothing to do with the "bat-like squeaks" mentioned in the article.
- Avshalom 9y agoConsidering that the word barbarian comes to us from Greeks describing any language that wasn't Greek as the like the baying of sheep I wouldn't take "bat-like squeaks" too literally.
- jschwartzi 9y agoHerodotus was notable among the Greeks for trying to accurately record history. I don't think we can safely assume that he embellished this story.
- YeGoblynQueenne 9y agoMaybe he didn't embellish his stories, but he certainly wrote down a lot of things that were clearly folk tales and hearsay and of which he had no way to check the veracity. You can't really make anything of his reporting of "Aethiopian bat squeaks". Oh and btw- he was not the only (ancient) Greek interested in a more rigorous look at history. You have probably heard of Thucidides, Xenofon etc.
- cma 9y agoBeing notable for something doesn't mean others can't be notable for it to.
- mratzloff 9y agoReminds me of Michael Rooker's character from Guardians of the Galaxy, with his whistle-controlled arrow. I'd love to hear an example of how this might work with English. It's hard to imagine ex nihilo.
- Zuider 9y agoThe article does give an example of how it works in Spanish. There is an audio sample linked of the sentence 'En todo el mundo hay hombres que hablan silbando' being whistled. https://soundcloud.com/bbc_com/entodoelmundo https://soundcloud.com/bbc_com/entodoelmundo
- BerislavLopac 9y agoThen there is Silbo Gomero: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PgEmSb0cKBg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PgEmSb0cKBg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silbo_Gomero https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silbo_Gomero
- pacaro 9y agoWhistles can be a fun way to control a system, the DSP needed to do this is really simple, and whistles really punch through the noise floor like nothing else! I've always used discrete change in pitch as the "symbol", so commands are encoded as (for example) UP UP DOWN UP, so this only depends on the relative pitch change between short whistles.
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