Articulated whistling. What and how. (Silbo canario /gomero/ herreño/ guanche.)

0:00 hello folks I've had a couple of people ask me about the Canaries whistle language so I'll see if I can go over a few of the few of the things that might be interesting about this form of communication and how easy or otherwise it is to learn and the whistle on which I use is one based on Spanish there are the canary islands and there are also similar or not to say identical systems used with away the Turkish and whether the village called Cusco where

0:46 practically all the villagers listen as well as speaker was referred further for a longer distance communication obviously just like here in the Canaries and and also in Greece there's a little island where there's a village where the locals whistle not so many nowadays but it's well documented those two the Turkish one and there the Greek one are well documented with them lots of sound samples etc and it's quite clear that it's the same system that we used sim system of whistling he used to imitate the spoken words that we use here in the Canaries the same system was also used what was also used in the South of France in a tiny little village near the city of Po in the Pyrenees and this has

1:33 now been revived and actually really has been revived because there are now many people whether a certain number of people in these villages who now are fluent visitors and also let's document it but I am certainly known and somewhat documented or people living in the Atlas Mountains in Morocco so it's mostly a belief and which is where probably the Whistler is here where the original whistle in the Canary Islands camera we would imagine with the population many hundreds more like thousands of years ago from that part of mainland Africa so to learn the whistle language

2:20 is it easy is it not well to learn this language is pretty easy the thing is you also in order to use it effectively are practically you need to know one of the substrate languages in my case I only know Spanish so whenever I wasn't honestly in Spanish because it seems that nobody listens in English probably due to the large number what I mean is there's no population we know of and whistle in that language to each other because the vowels in English are probably too many too flexible in order for they're not for the listener to listen um in order for the listener to pick them up and distinguish now whereas Spanish has very few vowels and Turkish

3:10 has thirty few vowels and they use harmony which probably ties in and listening to make it a bit easier and the other one Greek has I think six or seven vowels maybe eight not many and the language they use in the South of France to whistle is not French because French it would seem probably has too many vowels as ways like English it is over a dozen vowels whereas the local language they use in the Pyrenees which they now again whistling just like they did in the past languages which has I

3:57 guess six or seven thousand quite close to Spanish so yes if you speak one of these languages for example Spanish well then you're way ahead of the game you know it's just child listening however if you don't speak them you can still start you can still learn to whistle learn the techniques and then all this holding you back you've got to go up ahead and learn in Spanish which why not you could learn them both yeah more or less at the same time there's no rule that says you've got another one before the other you didn't after whistle and then learn Spanish and whistle as you go there are many different techniques used to whistle the the ones that are practical for communication are you have two

4:44 requirements they should be loud in order to reach long distances and they should allow for articulation of sounds in other words that you can use the many different organs of the mouth to further advantage lips tongue palette cheeks all that kind of thing this the most common whistle probably in the world is the pursed lip wasn't this one it's not ideal it's probably not good enough for practical and useful language whistling and there are many of the terms well techniques which do work the ones that I use are zero fingers with one

5:37 finger which is a classical posture used especially in boom era where most of the visitors are especially nowadays and most come around people with one any one of the fingers of their good hand out of the thumb generally is first a second finger recently it seems to have to kind of become standardized and that is the stance that looks the best team it looks the most em conventional and then they would use their their second hand as kind of a nothing theater and what I want to say yes so you learn to whistle when you can learn the

6:23 technique like that I could go through or any would stuff to go through what you do the actual characteristics of one thing is exactly going on when you do this Shawn where that where the finger sits on the tongue where the tongue goes how you move your mouth where the air comes out where the year turns into sound produces a sound all the kind of stuff and then is the other one which I use with no fingers which is like a different technique but it has very similar results and and then there are many people who use two fingers like so alright so there are many people who use three or four fingers to say this can you you've all seen people whistle like this I don't do because I don't need any

7:08 kind of got this one very similar and all sorts so what if they bring one of my whistling and friends here in the Canaries started whistling and within a month he was one of the best I used to go the mountains and here they're known all this walks with and he had the strangest posture I've ever seen him to time said he seemed to tie the knots every time it was which was a little bit inconvenient when you're walking along the mountain and maybe you've got a stick on me to put down this take them on and go about as wissen widget which

7:56 may which is shows how convenient the no thing or whistle is to have as well as a finger listen if for example you're walking in the fields or if you're carrying something otherwise occupied or if another dirty so I anyone wanted to learn wisdom I could go through those techniques and show you how it's done and then you just our Turkish our greed our Berber our oxygen whichever language you can find that suits the wisdom and there's a bunch of other stuff knowledge that I could talk about but it's not occurring to me now and I see like nine minutes so

8:45 people are trying to contact me so I'll leave it at that for now and anybody who has any questions feel free to ask and I'll do another video on this subject or whatever other subject people would be interested in and that's all anybody who wants to whistle I might be the best way to get you started feel free to contact me and we'll organize a session anytime you want in English or in Spanish okay folks thank you very much