The Ancient Whistled Language Of La Gomera - Silbo Gomero | Europe To The Maxx
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 30 ม.ค. 2025
- Long before telephones were invented, locals living on the Spanish island La Gomera in the Canaries were able to communicate across great distances. Their secret is a whistled language. Whistling travels much further and with less effort than shouting, so it is the perfect way of communicating on the volcanic island. There are around 40 whistled languages in the world. Most are facing extinction. But ‘Silbo Gomero’ is a compulsory subject in grade school in La Gomera. Euromaxx Reporter Hendrik Welling spent some time in class on the island in the Canaries.
#EuropeToTheMaxx #LaGomera #Whistling
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As a linguist (just a graduate but still), I'm fascinated. If humans made whistling a language, it's easy to imagine that dolphin whistling could be a language too.
I wonder if you could teach them Silbo instead of learning their language that will be in a higher pitch and more complex
José that is actually a really good idea. I wonder if anyone else has had it too?
@@joseanli wonder if that would work, it would be really cool
@@NoBaconForYouactually Mariah Carey did and the dolphin went nuts 😂😂😂 kidding aside that could be possible since they are really smart
Considering they say dolphins are comparably smart as a human child, it very well might. Perhaps it's rudimentary, and only has like several tens or hundreds of total words, but if it's still a language, there might be an argument to be made that dolphins are borderline sapient.
I'm so glad this has been made a required part of their school curriculum. Languages are a human treasure that can only be truly and fully preserved by ensuring the next generation can speak them fluently. Too many have died or are in the process of dying out.
It blows my mind that this is not only possible, but that it's a legitimate language
In mexico they have one that doesn't require fingers....
Take that! Also same statement to the Turkish whistle language.
The mexican one seems more day to day than specialized, hence the lack of fingers.
Kind of like normal English vs morse code
Why it would blow your mind? A word is just articulated sound. A whistle is sound too.
Technically it's not a language but a code. It could be done with Morse code.
@@AlejandroPRGH Yeah, the language is Spanish, it's a way to transmit Spanish through tone. (Specifically, it's the second vowel formant frequency that's whistled.) Originally the Spanish invaders learned the whistling from the native (now all dead) Guanche, who whistled their own language. And I saw a guy who could do it also easily whistle his native Basque as well.
My dad used to whistle to get our attention in loud place or from far away. It was super useful during the Christchurch earthquakes. Only downside it that some dog owners use the same whistles... I've gone looking for my dad and ended up at a dog park a few times
My father was an officer in the Spanish Army and he had a whistled call for each of us 4 brothers, much like bugle calls.
@@AlejandroPRGHmy father does the same. It is like my second name
Mi padre ,Juan H. Acevedo Arce,nos llamaba con un tremendo silbido a casa de Don.Antonio Forte,a un kilómetro de distancia!Se escuchaba claro!JHACV2
We have this way of communication in the atlas mountains of morocco. The original Amazigh (berber) shepherds has been using it for hundreds of years according to them .
It is absolutely fascinating
The original inhabitants of the Canaries were related to the Amazighs so there is a link there.
@@ImranChaudhry not really it’s moreso a fact of the geography and it’s a way shepherds talked even in the Romanian mountains.
It’s even cooler as it’s most likely they spoke this way for thousands not hundreds of years.
It would be interesting to see a study of whether people who speak Silbo since childhood have a higher-than-average incidence of perfect pitch.
The sounds as they appear to you are not only different from those that are really present, but they sometimes behave so strangely as to seem quite impossible.
Sometimes behave so strangely.
Sometimes behave so strangely.
I'm guessing people who suffer from Amusia won't be able to ever speak this language.
People who speak tonal languages like Mandarin tend to be closer to Perfect Pitch than stressed languages like English or Dutch
@@macster1457 Speech processing is able to compensate amusia in tonal languages well enough to communicate (albeit with a potential, additional struggle), so I figure it’d be similar in this language.
@@josiahjray I don't think you're understanding what Amusia is.
recently read on wikipedia ..whistle sound could be heard at 5kms! amazing 👍🏻
What a fun, smart, unique, natural way to communicate among such beautiful place.
Been searching youtube. So many places around the world where people comunicate through whistling it proves this was a big part of human evolution. people would comunicate like this in the past.
Human civilization is full of such wonders. Thanks for the great video.
Amazing! Reminds me of the special whistle I had for when my son was in a crowded playground. I'd whistle and he'd pop up and wave. Lol, I love it!
I lived in Tenerife Island for some months, years ago, and I heard about "El Silbo" but never visited La Gomera. I'll do❤
Love Spain 🇪🇸
En 4:17 es muy interesante escuchar el silbo, ver la traducción "Buenos días. Soy Kiko Correa y estamos en la gomera" y después volver a escuchar el silbo. Suena exactamente como el español pero en silbo. Muy interesante!
hahaha prefiro ouvir a fala mesmo
En realidad creo que la primera vez cuando lo silba el dice "Buenos días. Yo soy- Kiko Correa - y estamos - en La Gomera". Sucede que cuando Kiko repite la traducción, omitió el "Yo" por olvido
@@brina5064 We got a proper uni linguist in the chat here bois
Estoy flipando tienes razón
@@brina5064 opino que incluir el "yo" en el silbo ayuda a dar contexto
The line cooks at my job speak this. I didn't know it was a language and started whistling back and they were really amused. I repeated some of their whistles back so I think they probably pranked me by saying stupid stuff
I can whistle pretty loud but not through my fingers. I'd love to learn, knowing that my great-grandmother Louisa came from the Canary Islands. She passed away in America from tuberculosis & my grandma was adopted by italian, so I feel I have to keep tradition alive. Thanks for posting. I first learned about whistling from Guanches first inhabitants of Tenerife one of many Islands or Canaria.
It’s a different and interesting report. Congratulations from Ecuador
Respect for your efforts to 'rediscover' and 'revive' your culture form India.
i can whistle.
not just the O lipped kind, but also that loud finger kind. i cant do the retroflexed tongue, but im sure i could learn.
it would be fun to learn some words.
and who knows what happens from there.
wikipedia says:There are a few different techniques of how to produce whistle speech, the choice of which is dependent on practical concerns. Bilabial and labiodental techniques are common for short and medium distance discussions (in a market, in the noise of a room, or for hunting); whereas the tongue retroflexed, one or two fingers introduced in the mouth, a blow concentrated at the junction between two fingers or the lower lip pulled while breathing in air are techniques used to reach high levels of power for long distance speaking.[4]
so you basically learned that a quiet whistle without fingers involved are more useful for short distances and the loud ones with one or more fingers are for distance communication.
wow.
after you understood the technique you gotta learn the language^^
sorry, dude. to be able to whistle loud or quiet is just like to be able to talk or to scream. as a good whistler in our culture you still need years to learn that language.
@@bobabier5394 whats with the smug, down looking, passive aggressive tone.
i didnt even say anything apart from, i can whistle, which kinds and its be fun to learn the language.
and you come up all in my comment smug for nothing. wtf.
not everyone can whistle quiet or loud. so its hardl like talking and screaming.
i didnt say it was a realisation that a loud whistle is better for long distances. i just wrote a chain of though. not like i was "AHA loud noise travel further!?!" where is this condesending smugness coming from.
plus unlike your useless comment i looked stuff up on wikipedia. and hopefully contributed to the discussion.
if you looking for a fire hydrant to pee on, look somewhere else
Fascinating! Thankyou from Canada.
Amazing. Whenever I try to whistle it sounds like a dying miniature brass instrument
I am from Gran Canaria and was always curious about this
Can't believe whistling is just as hard as learning a new language (but I guess this IS a new language 😂)
it's just regular Spanish language with all of the sounds changed into whistles.
Thank you 🙏 I never heard this before wow
You're welcome!
Fascinating. Reminds me of how birds communicate. Language is after all sounds produced in patterns. Awesome. 😊
Bravo!!! Excellent story and great tradition!
Keeping your unique and rich cultural history alive is essential.
Beautiful area and beautiful people.
So that’s the language R2D2 speaks!
This is like finding out about using lighting if you are learning fire bending.
Everyone is like "Shutfeeew up! I'meeew tryiiiiing to spweeeeak heeeeeere"
This is very interesting! Did not know about it. I have a unique way of whistling to call my sons. Even the neighbors now know it !
A whistling language that has been formed by their ancestors for generations, it's a shame for it to disappear from their culture. (But cellphone battery fail is always a possibility, so...)
Its actually not disapearing because its taught in schools all over La Gomera
I'm going to learn this by all means
Nice
haha good luck with that sh!t
Well there are over 20 different whistling African languages. Interesting that ppl are perplexed at the origin of this form of communication 🤔🤔.
Jesus, omgh I'm a grown-up adult and suddenly today I've learned about the Silbo language... didn't even know its existence, I had no idea that such a language exists in the world :-)
Beautiful house in beautiful island 😍😍
Too bad there is no explanation about the technique itself, or rather, when he started explaining the technique a voice-over starts chattering through it.
You can easily do your own research. It’s said to mimic the sounds in the Spanish language. As far as the technique they literally said you have to practice whistling through your fingers. There is no magic trick
I am descendant of Guanches and we grow up whistling 😗 but we were not allowed to whistle in the house. It’s weird but whistling to us was like second nature.
@burninglight light Interesting! In Germany there is a superstition only known to few - whistling in a theater brings bad luck to the actors.. 🎭
@@dweuromaxx Interesting
@@dweuromaxx there’s so much people don’t know about our heritage. I think 🤔 this whole thing about the Guanches have been exploded for money. They made it into a tourist spot and making money off my ancestors. Spain murdered my people and now they make statues of them to promote people touring the island. They did not create pottery, pyramid and among other things. Just not right to gain profit from souls that that murdered.
Do guanches still existe?! Are those that whiste all descendants of them?
@@hibya2066 not everyone that whistle are Guanches. Guanches tribe does not exist but they have descendants.
Human ingenuity at its best!
Damn, didnt know there is such cool info on German news channels!
I hesrd about this from a comment in vid about stick jumping...this is so fascinating..
Omg 😱 Same in Turkey (Kusköy)
@lilo Thank you for the hint! We should send Hendrik to Kusköy - however it is questionable whether the people understand the "vocabulary" he has learned so far...😉
Very Cool!
I gotta learn this.
*COOL!!!*
this is so cool
Thanks! We think so too
its a very beautiful story .. >.
It is
In giresun city of turkey, in a village, we have a bird language (kuş dili) like that 🙂
Hey guys from DW!
Put the elements at the end of the video...
I was expecting a suggestion for another interesting clip!
@Homeworks Thanks, we just did our homework, done!
@@dweuromaxx Hahaha... Thanks to all of you!
Canary islands 🇮🇨 inhabited first by the guanches ( amazigh people of north africa ) you can also find their mommified bodies their, the silbo is their language of whistling made by guamches. Long live imazighen.
we be watching this for spanish class.
Jayden, your grammar is horrible.
There used to be a similar whistling language in Britain only used by workmen on building sites and only spoken to attractive females who happened to walk by the site however that whistling language was banned after complaints not from the attractive women whistled at but by unattractive women who were not whistled at.
Nos podemos comunicar con los pajaritos... Guau. Ahora entiendo Alos pajaritos cuando nos cantan...🥰
En mi barrio, los asaltantes y extorsionadores se comunican igual.
I tried it out, and I had oddly good success, but I'm a decent whistler
The real "windtalkers"...
Coming from San Mao’s novel about this whistling language on la gomera island
Does anyone know where I can learn how to whistle like that? Like not talk the language but whistle like that?
Online by yourself (?). I've picked up random hobbies/learned a bunch of random shizz online over the years.
Edit: oh and the reason I'm on this video now is just because I've recently been wanting to learn to whistle NORMALLY; to expand my range and whistle songs. Sat in front of the computer, sick, the other week (still sick but now down with something new) and just whistled and suddenly whistling different notes clicked for me while it never has before. Thus looked up how worldclass whistlers sound, fell down a new e-rabbithole and am now slowly learning.
This sounds like a good medium for a human-dolphin language exchange
With my luck, I would finally get a great whistle out and it would be an unknowing insult or bad word.
With my luck, I'll probably end up summoning some eldritch entity and learn the hard way why many cultures have taboos on whistling.
similarly, it is widely used in Turkey Giresun Kuşköy.
The island where Columbus used to launch his voyages from.
I don’t know what’s more interesting… the whistling, or this guys hair.
The 2 vowels/4 consonants model is dated (though it still has supporters); the most recent proposal I’ve seen using modern statistical methods shows 4 vowels/8-10 consonants.
Research is ongoing.
So you say you've traveled there and that's what they do?
@@Douken I’ve been there, but I don’t know how to understand/speak it.
However, it’s the subject of many research articles in phonology, where the “consensus” description has been revised over time.
Incrível!!!
I was doing an IELTS reading test and it led me here
It’s amazing, they don’t have a Spanish accent, it almost sounds Cuban.
“Trade route” Spanish.
It's very diferent from cuban.
@@redl1ner170 It is definitely different from the Cuban, and at the same it is, it's actually the parent accent/dialect of the Cuban accent. Spaniards from the Canary Islands, along with Andalusia, Galicia, the Basque Country, Extremadura and Castile-Leon, were the principal groups emigrating to the Americas during the Spanish Empire days and after. Canarians, shown here, primarily migrated to the Dominican Republic, Cuba, Puerto Rico and Venezuela, which is why their accents are indeed similar to this day.
Where do you think it comes from…
Great, but to me is impossible too the whistle. 😆😅
Sounds like my mom tryna round us up at the store 😂 she's cuban but raised in puerto rico (and my dad and me are puerto rican) so we get a lot of culture from the canary islands 🙏
💜💜💜
anybody else wish they spent more time on the actual instructions and less time on the background info?
@dharmapunk777 So you want to see a whistling tutorial? 🚂
@@dweuromaxx a Silbo tutorial
What's even more amazing is that man had a coconut grafted to his head in lieu of a toupee...
🤔
it makes me think of the native birds in Australia
3:50 did he just
If it wasn't for IELTS reading 15, probably I wouldn't know these guys exists XD
So R2-D2's beeping could actually be a plausible form of communication!
Sat here tryin to whistle like this ha ha i"m probaly pissin my neighbours off..
A whistling language exist even in Northern Turkey.
It’s like an extra primitive version of morse code in ham radio.
When I try to learn a new language. My brain tries to tie the English words first into the translation for me to understand what’s said.
I feel like I’m doing this wrong. How can I understand other languages without forcing myself to translate every word into English first? Or is that the only way?
Who is like me there? Those who have completed IELTS passage15 test 4.
Human version of speaking bird.
VIVA CANARIAS
Well... now I've heard everything... 😆
It's not that e.z but I 1t 2 learn !!! 😢 M moving to "la Gomera " ...
I can whistle.
3:49 What! 9,000!?
Imagine arguing with your wife in this language
@Greg _ • Better try "Love chirping" first 😁
Turkish city çanakçı kuşköy use bird language
Sounds like a bird language. Many western cultures use this in part for naval notifications and for comments such as "watch out!"
The German guy at the beginning was mind blown lol. If you whistled like this in Germany they would commit you to a mental institution 😂
Let's hear him whistle the Gettysburg Address. hahaha
Presenter looks like a German Brian Cox
'to be honest I haven't understood anything'.... ahahahhahaha
I think I crapped my pants trying to understand those whistles
😅
R2d2
Thats so cool spain shojdl start to bring in laws s to protect the language teach it in school as it is tradition that should not get lost
It's studied in La Gomera's schools since 1999.
🇹🇷 🇪🇸 🇬🇷 🇮🇹 Same ppl
Guanche ⵉⴳⵡⴰⵏⵛⵉⵢⵏ
Guanches are wiped out by the spanish colonisation for your information :D
@@hibya2066
They still exist, and their traditions and way of living prove that, of course genetics proves that many Guanches survived, and their descendants exist today.
@@massinissaziriamazigh8122 genetically they are just arround 40% guanche because of inbreeding, and history says most of them killed just like Indians of America, after all carrying guanches genes means nothing when they lost their identity, especially their language as they represent themselves just a part of the Spanish population.
Have they heard of the cell phone
Poor reception up there in the mountains..😉
dude imagine if this is all cap and some group just invented that language like 20 years ago or something 💀💀
Noo es muy verídico y se ha pasado de generación a generación Sobre todo en las personas campesinas q vivían más aisladas entre las montañas y laderas Te lo afirma una Gomera 😊😂❤
Canaries/ Guanches Islands are in North África!