Where do you find whistled languages?

darthrevan89

Languages communicated by whistling are relatively rare, but are known from around the world. One example is the Silbo on the island of La Gomera in the Canary Islands, which maintains Spanish's five vowels, but reduces its consonants down to four. Others exist or existed in all parts of the world including Turkey (Kusköy "Village of the Birds"), France (the village of Aas in the Pyrenees), Mexico (the Zapotecs of Oaxaca), South America (Piraha), Asia (the Chepang of Nepal), and New Guinea. They are especially common and robust today in parts of West Africa, used widely in such populous languages as Yoruba and Ewe. Even French is whistled in some areas of western Africa. In continental Africa, speech may be conveyed by a whistle or other musical instrument, most famously the "talking drums". However, while drums may be used by griots singing praise songs or for inter-village communication, and other instruments may be used on the radio for station identification jingles, for regular conversation at a distance whistled speech is used. As two people approach each other, one may even switch from whistled to spoken speech in mid-sentence. In the Greek village of Antia, the entire population knows how to whistle their speech, and whistled conversations are also carried on at close range. In Africa and indigenous Mexican communities, whistled language is used only by men. http://www.crystalinks.com/whistledlanguage.html Jul 08 08, 8:19 AM

jaknginger

Whislted languages are tonal languages. Southern and Eastern Africa have several whistled languages. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whistled_language Jul 08 08, 8:20 AM