May 28, 2010
COLLECTION
I am preparing for my first collection of whistles and photographs in Baltimore, Maryland on June 26 & 27 at the Latino Festival. I hope to interview many volunteers and do weekly posts of each person's portrait, whistle recordings and interview.
I have also added a Soundcloud dropbox so that anyone can contribute to this blog their personal whistle recordings.
May 27, 2010
COMMUNICATIVE WHISTLING
Whistled languages use whistling to emulate speech and facilitate communication. 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 the restricted codes sometimes used by herders or animal trainers to transmit simple messages or instructions. 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. 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.
(Below is not a direct translation of the above text)
Un lenguaje silbado es un sistema de comunicación mediante silbidos. Los lenguajes silbados no son lenguas en el sentido estricto de la palabra, sino conversiones de los fonemas de una lengua ya existente en silbidos con unos tonos, longitudes e intensidades determinadas. En la mayoría de los casos, el silbido se realiza con la boca, aunque algunos lenguajes silbados africanos requieren el uso de un silbato.
Debido a que la expresividad del silbido es limitada en comparación con los sistemas de comunicación verbales, los mensajes silbados son normalmente cortos y a menudo deben repetirse. La principal ventaja reside en que la comunicación puede realizarse a grandes distancias (normalmente de uno a dos kilómetros, aunque a veces alcanza los 5 km ). Normalmente, las lenguas silbadas se desarrollan en áreas de poca población y terreno inaccesible. En África y México, sólo los hombres emplean los lenguajes silbados.