i quickly realized that i had stumbled across a nugget of folk knowledge gold. the majority of us know how to whistle, and this is usually learned in a pretty standard folk knowledge way. we have also talked about how language relates to folk knowledge. this, however, is the synthesis of these two. a practical skill, whistling, was transformed into a method of communication by the nomadic ancestors of the gomeran people who needed a way to communicate across the rough terrain of their island.
language is one of the most central forms of folk knowledge - we all learned a language as an infant - so i don't really know why i find this simple language so fascinating. maybe it's because i would be the town mute if i lived there, but then just when i thought i had no link to whistled
speech, i found this..."In popular culture whistled languages are common in robots. R2-D2 is a well-known whistler from the Star Wars series of films who uses modulated whistles to communicate with other droids and express emotion. The emotions articulated in the film are understood by the human audience without the aid of facial expressions."(wiki) There are several cultures throughout the world who use whistled languages. these usually arise in conditions like that of the sibo gomero - low population density, rough terrain environments. this makes me wonder if Darwin would see this as a species adapting to its environment.the final thing i would like to mention is that the spanish government recognized both that this language was a valuable piece of culture, and that it was disappearing rapidly (who's gonna whistle across the valley when you can text?), so they passed a law requiring it to be taught in gomeran schools, thus making the shift from this being a form of folk knowledge to an institutionalized form of knowledge like math and science.
learning about this amazing language makes me wonder, though - is this language a dialect of the father tongue, the mother tongue or is it it's own whistle-tongue?
Hmm... I would say it's a spoken language taught by the mother tongue (it being a folk knowledge), while it's used primarily to speak the father tongue in long-range public communication.
ReplyDeleteA species adapting to its environment... Species that can learn from each other are able to pass knowledge on and provide future generations with their 'adaptations.' Is the existence of knowledge an expression of a hardwired proclivity in our brains?
BTW, nice find. :)
ReplyDeleteThe fact that any language could be transcoded into a similar style of whistling is kind of awesome. (only kind of ;)
Wow, this is amazing. I've always wished I could whistle better. This makes me even more jealous of whistlers.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Jon regarding the mother/father tongue. It was a folk knowledge passed along by the mother tongue when it was a necessity but when it became a luxury instead of a survival technique, thats when it started to become more of a father tongue language.
What a cool folk knowledge! I remember I learned how to whistle thanks to the Nickelodeon TV show "Gullah Gullah Island."
ReplyDeleteIt's interesting seeing how knowledge is stored. I learned how to whistle from a tv show, and the Spanish government requires it to be taught in schools. So which one (tv or school) is father tongue? mother tongue?
I'm pretty sure the sibo gomero whistling is now a father tongue, as it is taught in school as some sort of sophisticated knowledge. But the children's tv show might actually be some sort of mother tongue. (Did the tv replace my mother??) I learned just from watching it and whistling along, the children in Spain must learn it the same way they do math or science. It's interesting to see, as well, how much technology has changed the idea of "knowledge storing" as well as "mother tongue" and "father tongue." Talk about a paradigm shift. . .