Speaking in Whistles: The Whistled Language of Oaxaca, Mexico

Whis­tled lan­guage is a rare form of com­mu­ni­ca­tion that can be most­ly found in loca­tions with iso­lat­ing fea­tures such as scat­tered set­tle­ments or moun­tain­ous ter­rain. This doc­u­men­tary above shows how Dr. Mark Sicoli, Assis­tant Pro­fes­sor of Lin­guis­tics at George­town Uni­ver­si­ty, con­ducts field stud­ies among speak­ers of a Chi­nan­tec lan­guage, who live in the moun­tain­ous region of north­ern Oax­a­ca in Mex­i­co. The Sum­mer Insti­tute of Lin­guis­tics in Mex­i­co has record­ed and tran­scribed a whis­tled con­ver­sa­tion in Sochi­a­pam Chi­nan­tec between two men in dif­fer­ent fields. The result can be seen and heard here.

The most thor­ough­ly-researched whis­tled lan­guage how­ev­er is Sil­bo Gomero, the lan­guage of the island of La Gomera (Canary Islands). In 2009, it was inscribed on the Rep­re­sen­ta­tive List of the Intan­gi­ble Cul­tur­al Her­itage of Human­i­ty. The UNESCO web­site has a good descrip­tion of this whis­tled lan­guage with pho­tos and a video. Hav­ing almost died out, the lan­guage is now taught once more in schools.

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By pro­fes­sion, Matthias Rasch­er teach­es Eng­lish and His­to­ry at a High School in north­ern Bavaria, Ger­many. In his free time he scours the web for good links and posts the best finds on Twit­ter.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Learn 40 Lan­guages for Free: Span­ish, Eng­lish, Chi­nese & More


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Comments (17)
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  • Merve Hosgor says:

    Inter­est­ing:) we have in Turkey the same lan­guage spo­ken in the north of coun­try, in a city near black sea, Gire­sun!! you can see here­http:

    //www.vidivodo.com/video/giresun-isliklikoy-showhaber/444915

    it’s called ‘bird lan­guage’ . in the video they say it is born when they see it’s dif­fi­cult to comu­ni­cate and make your voice hear when some­one is in the moun­tain or in the fields. very sim­i­lar to this one!

  • marzipanj says:

    MK shout-out to the SIL–but also it’s crazy how any sound that humans can make can be made into mean­ing. Also reminds me of “Spell of the Sen­su­ous” with peo­ple inhab­it­ing dif­fer­ent ani­mals in order to com­mu­ni­cate to each oth­er…

  • streetlevel says:

    Very inter­est­ing! It’s amaz­ing how flex­i­ble the human mind is.

  • Belen says:

    This is absolute­ly amaz­ing. I hope some­thing can be done to pre­vent this lan­guage from extinc­tion and pro­mote it with­in the regions’ peo­ple.

  • randy says:

    This is real­ly cool. It’s worth watch­ing the full 30 min­utes.

  • Nomvelo says:

    I thor­ough­ly enjoyed watch­ing the video! I too hope that the this lan­guage does not become extinct.

  • Valerie Proctor says:

    This is so inter­est­ing. I am sor­ry though that no time was tak­en to speak­ing with the women and find­ing out their point of view.

  • Kate Hall says:

    Bril­liant. This lan­guage con­firms our social need to com­mu­ni­cate by any means. Fan­tas­tic!

  • Denise says:

    In the nov­el “Green Man­sions” set in South Amer­i­can, the nar­ra­tor talks about a young girl and her moth­er who speak the “bird” lan­guage of whis­tles.

  • Pamela says:

    Awe­some post and awe­some top­ic :-)

    The whis­tle lan­guage from La Gomera (Canarias, Spain) is con­sid­ered “the biggest one alive” but still in dan­ger like the rest of alive whis­tle lan­guages. It is intan­gi­ble world her­itage: http://www.unesco.org/culture/ich/en/RL/whistled-language-of-the-island-of-la-gomera-canary-islands-the-silbo-gomero-00172

    Cur­rent­ly I’m work­ing about its lat­er­al­iza­tion for my mas­ter the­sis: http://ruhrwhistles.edublogs.org/
    One of my super­vi­sors is Onur Gün­türkün, who stud­ied this in the Turk­ish one.

  • Pamela says:

    Sor­ry for repeat­ing the info about the Sil­bo gomero, it did not appear the com­plete post at the begin­ning!

  • Jo Matranga says:

    My hus­band is a Chipawa Cree from Mon­tana and only Eng­lish is spo­ken. Is there any­body who can help save this lan­guage. I stud­ied Archae­ol­o­gy at UCLA and it is impor­tant to me to help save this lan­guage and their cul­ture. PLEASE help me

  • Blow Me says:

    I stayed overnight in a room in Mex­i­co and in the next room from 8pm till 4am some of these whistling lan­guage peo­ple con­tin­u­al­ly whis­tled. Maybe the rea­son the lan­guage is dis­ap­pear­ing out is because the peo­ple are is because these peo­ple are van­ish­ing.

  • Blow Me says:

    I stayed overnight in a room in Mex­i­co and in the next room from 8pm till 4am some of these whistling lan­guage peo­ple con­tin­u­al­ly whis­tled. Maybe the rea­son the lan­guage is dis­ap­pear­ing out is because the peo­ple are because these peo­ple are van­ish­ing mys­te­ri­ous­ly

  • Blow Me says:

    I stayed overnight in a room in Mex­i­co and in the next room from 8pm till 4am some of these whistling lan­guage peo­ple con­tin­u­al­ly whis­tled. Maybe the rea­son the lan­guage is dis­ap­pear­ing out is because the peo­ple are van­ish­ing mys­te­ri­ous­ly

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