Silbo
Encyclopedia
Silbo Gomero also known as "el silbo" ('the whistle'), is a whistled language
spoken by inhabitants of La Gomera
in the Canary Islands
to communicate across the deep ravines and narrow valleys (gullies) that radiate through the island. A speaker of Silbo Gomero is sometimes referred to in Spanish as a "silbador" ('whistler'). It was declared as a Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity
by UNESCO
in 2009.
or languages of the Canaries, though it is assumed they must have had a simple enough phonological/phonetic system to allow an efficient whistled language. Invented before their arrival by the original inhabitants of the island, the Guanches
, and "spoken" also on el Hierro
, Tenerife
, and Gran Canaria
, Silbo was adapted to Spanish by the last Guanches and adopted by the Spanish settlers in the 16th century and thus survived. In 1976 Silbo barely remained on el Hierro, where it had flourished at the end of the 19th century. When this unique medium of communication was about to die out in the late 20th century, the local government required all Gomeran children to study it in school. The language's survival before that point was due to topography or terrain and the ease with which it is learned by native speakers. It now has official protection as an example of intangible cultural heritage
.
Manuel Carreiras of the University of La Laguna
and David Corina of the University of Washington
published research on Silbo in 2004 and 2005 arguing that Silbo was understood by the brain
in much the same way as a spoken language. Their study of speakers of Spanish
(some of whom "spoke" Silbo and some of whom did not) showed (by monitoring brain activity with functional magnetic resonance imaging
) that while non-speakers of Silbo merely processed Silbo as whistling, speakers of Silbo processed the whistling sounds in the same linguistic centers of the brain that processed Spanish sentences.
published his book "EL SILBO GOMERO análisis lingüístico" in 1978. This work containing almost a hundred spectrograms concludes in a theory that there are only two vowels and four consonants in the Silbo Gomero language. In Trujillo's work Silbo's vowels are given one quality, pitch. Either high or low. However, the work of Julien Meyer (2005 - in French only (pg 100), 2008) gives a statistical analysis of the vowels of Silbo showing that there are 4 vowels statistically distinguished in production and that they are also perceived so. Also in 2005, Annie Rialland of the University of Paris III: Sorbonne Nouvelle
published an acoustic and phonological analysis of Silbo based on new materials, showing that not only gliding tones but also intensity modulation plays a role in distinguishing different whistled sounds.
Trujillo's 2005 collaboration with Gomeran whistler Isidro Ortiz and others ("EL SILBO GOMERO Materiales didácticos" - qv. pdf link below) revises his earlier assertions to state that 4 vowels are indeed perceived (qv. pg 63 ref. cit.), and describes in detail the areas of divergence between his empirical data and Classe’s phonetic hypotheses. Despite Trujillo's 2005 work acknowledging the existence of 4 vowels, his 2006 bilingual work ("El Silbo Gomero. Nuevo estudio fonológico") inexplicably reiterates his 1978 two-vowel theory. Trujillo's 2006 work directly addresses many of Rialland's conclusions, but it seems that at the time of that writing he was unaware of Meyer's work.
Meyer suggests that there are 4 vowel classes of /i/, /e/, /a/, /u, o/. However Meyer goes on to say that there are 5 perceived vowels with significant overlap. Rialland (2005) and Trujillo (1978) both agree that the harmonic
of the whistle matches the second formant
of the spoken vowels. Spoken /a/'s F2 and whistled /a/'s H1 match in their frequency (1480 Hz). However there is a disconnect in harmonics and formants near the frequency basement. Spoken speech has a wide range of F2 frequencies (790 Hz to 2300 Hz), whistles are limited to 1200 Hz to 2400 Hz. Vowels are therefore shifted upwards at the lower end (maintaining 1480 Hz as /a/) increasing confusion between /o/ (spoken F2 freq 890 Hz, whistled <1300 Hz) and /u/ (spoken freq 790 Hz, Whistled <<1300 Hz). In whistling the frequency basement must be raised to the minimum whistle harmonic of 1000 Hz reducing frequency spacing in the vowels, which increases misidentification in the lower vowels.
Whistled language
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...
spoken by inhabitants of La Gomera
La Gomera
La Gomera is one of Spain's Canary Islands, located in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Africa. In area, it is the second-smallest of the seven main islands of this group.- Political organization :...
in the Canary Islands
Canary Islands
The Canary Islands , also known as the Canaries , is a Spanish archipelago located just off the northwest coast of mainland Africa, 100 km west of the border between Morocco and the Western Sahara. The Canaries are a Spanish autonomous community and an outermost region of the European Union...
to communicate across the deep ravines and narrow valleys (gullies) that radiate through the island. A speaker of Silbo Gomero is sometimes referred to in Spanish as a "silbador" ('whistler'). It was declared as a Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity
Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity
The Proclamation of Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity was made by the Director-General of UNESCO starting in 2001 to raise awareness on intangible cultural heritage and encourage local communities to protect them and the local people who sustain these forms of cultural...
by UNESCO
UNESCO
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations...
in 2009.
History
Little is known of the original languageGuanche language
Guanche is an extinct language that was spoken by the Guanches of the Canary Islands until the 16th or 17th century. It is only known today through a few sentences and individual words recorded by early travellers, supplemented by several placenames, as well as some words assimilated into the...
or languages of the Canaries, though it is assumed they must have had a simple enough phonological/phonetic system to allow an efficient whistled language. Invented before their arrival by the original inhabitants of the island, the Guanches
Guanches
Guanches is the name given to the aboriginal Berber inhabitants of the Canary Islands. It is believed that they migrated to the archipelago sometime between 1000 BCE and 100 BCE or perhaps earlier...
, and "spoken" also on el Hierro
El Hierro
El Hierro, nicknamed Isla del Meridiano , is the smallest and farthest south and west of the Canary Islands , in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Africa, with a population of 10,162 .- Name :The name El Hierro, although phonetically identical to the Spanish word for 'iron', is generally thought...
, Tenerife
Tenerife
Tenerife is the largest and most populous island of the seven Canary Islands, it is also the most populated island of Spain, with a land area of 2,034.38 km² and 906,854 inhabitants, 43% of the total population of the Canary Islands. About five million tourists visit Tenerife each year, the...
, and Gran Canaria
Gran Canaria
Gran Canaria is the second most populous island of the Canary Islands, with a population of 838,397 which constitutes approximately 40% of the population of the archipelago...
, Silbo was adapted to Spanish by the last Guanches and adopted by the Spanish settlers in the 16th century and thus survived. In 1976 Silbo barely remained on el Hierro, where it had flourished at the end of the 19th century. When this unique medium of communication was about to die out in the late 20th century, the local government required all Gomeran children to study it in school. The language's survival before that point was due to topography or terrain and the ease with which it is learned by native speakers. It now has official protection as an example of intangible cultural heritage
Intangible cultural heritage
The concept of intangible cultural heritage emerged in the 1990s, as a counterpart to the World Heritage that focuses mainly on tangible aspects of culture...
.
Function
As with other whistled forms of non-tonal languages, the Silbo works by retaining approximately the articulation of ordinary speech, so "the timbre variations of speech appear in the guise of pitch variations" (Busnel and Classe: v). The language is a whistled form of a dialect of Spanish.Manuel Carreiras of the University of La Laguna
University of La Laguna
The University of San Fernando de La Laguna, also known as the ULL is situated in San Cristóbal de La Laguna, on the island of Tenerife. It is the oldest university in the Canary Islands, and has the highest student population of any university in these islands. It is also considered the most...
and David Corina of the University of Washington
University of Washington
University of Washington is a public research university, founded in 1861 in Seattle, Washington, United States. The UW is the largest university in the Northwest and the oldest public university on the West Coast. The university has three campuses, with its largest campus in the University...
published research on Silbo in 2004 and 2005 arguing that Silbo was understood by the brain
Brain
The brain is the center of the nervous system in all vertebrate and most invertebrate animals—only a few primitive invertebrates such as sponges, jellyfish, sea squirts and starfishes do not have one. It is located in the head, usually close to primary sensory apparatus such as vision, hearing,...
in much the same way as a spoken language. Their study of speakers of Spanish
Spanish language
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
(some of whom "spoke" Silbo and some of whom did not) showed (by monitoring brain activity with functional magnetic resonance imaging
Functional magnetic resonance imaging
Functional magnetic resonance imaging or functional MRI is a type of specialized MRI scan used to measure the hemodynamic response related to neural activity in the brain or spinal cord of humans or other animals. It is one of the most recently developed forms of neuroimaging...
) that while non-speakers of Silbo merely processed Silbo as whistling, speakers of Silbo processed the whistling sounds in the same linguistic centers of the brain that processed Spanish sentences.
Vowels
Ramón Trujillo of the University of La LagunaUniversity of La Laguna
The University of San Fernando de La Laguna, also known as the ULL is situated in San Cristóbal de La Laguna, on the island of Tenerife. It is the oldest university in the Canary Islands, and has the highest student population of any university in these islands. It is also considered the most...
published his book "EL SILBO GOMERO análisis lingüístico" in 1978. This work containing almost a hundred spectrograms concludes in a theory that there are only two vowels and four consonants in the Silbo Gomero language. In Trujillo's work Silbo's vowels are given one quality, pitch. Either high or low. However, the work of Julien Meyer (2005 - in French only (pg 100), 2008) gives a statistical analysis of the vowels of Silbo showing that there are 4 vowels statistically distinguished in production and that they are also perceived so. Also in 2005, Annie Rialland of the University of Paris III: Sorbonne Nouvelle
University of Paris III: Sorbonne Nouvelle
The New Sorbonne University is a public university in Paris, France.The Université de la Sorbonne Nouvelle is a founding member of the Paris Universitas, a union of 6 Parisian universities....
published an acoustic and phonological analysis of Silbo based on new materials, showing that not only gliding tones but also intensity modulation plays a role in distinguishing different whistled sounds.
Trujillo's 2005 collaboration with Gomeran whistler Isidro Ortiz and others ("EL SILBO GOMERO Materiales didácticos" - qv. pdf link below) revises his earlier assertions to state that 4 vowels are indeed perceived (qv. pg 63 ref. cit.), and describes in detail the areas of divergence between his empirical data and Classe’s phonetic hypotheses. Despite Trujillo's 2005 work acknowledging the existence of 4 vowels, his 2006 bilingual work ("El Silbo Gomero. Nuevo estudio fonológico") inexplicably reiterates his 1978 two-vowel theory. Trujillo's 2006 work directly addresses many of Rialland's conclusions, but it seems that at the time of that writing he was unaware of Meyer's work.
Meyer suggests that there are 4 vowel classes of /i/, /e/, /a/, /u, o/. However Meyer goes on to say that there are 5 perceived vowels with significant overlap. Rialland (2005) and Trujillo (1978) both agree that the harmonic
Harmonic
A harmonic of a wave is a component frequency of the signal that is an integer multiple of the fundamental frequency, i.e. if the fundamental frequency is f, the harmonics have frequencies 2f, 3f, 4f, . . . etc. The harmonics have the property that they are all periodic at the fundamental...
of the whistle matches the second formant
Formant
Formants are defined by Gunnar Fant as 'the spectral peaks of the sound spectrum |P|' of the voice. In speech science and phonetics, formant is also used to mean an acoustic resonance of the human vocal tract...
of the spoken vowels. Spoken /a/'s F2 and whistled /a/'s H1 match in their frequency (1480 Hz). However there is a disconnect in harmonics and formants near the frequency basement. Spoken speech has a wide range of F2 frequencies (790 Hz to 2300 Hz), whistles are limited to 1200 Hz to 2400 Hz. Vowels are therefore shifted upwards at the lower end (maintaining 1480 Hz as /a/) increasing confusion between /o/ (spoken F2 freq 890 Hz, whistled <1300 Hz) and /u/ (spoken freq 790 Hz, Whistled <<1300 Hz). In whistling the frequency basement must be raised to the minimum whistle harmonic of 1000 Hz reducing frequency spacing in the vowels, which increases misidentification in the lower vowels.
Consonants
Trujillo (1978) suggested that the consonants are either rises or dips in the “melody line” which can be broken or continuous. Further investigation by Meyer, and by Rialland suggest that vowels are stripped to their inherent class of sound which is communicated in the whistle in these ways: Voice (/k/ vs /g/) is transmitted by the whistled feature -continuity. A silent pause in the whistle communicates +voice (/g/). While a +continuous consonant gives the quality -voice (/k/). Placement of the consonant (dental, palatal, fricative) are transmitted in whistle by the loci of the formant transitions between vowels. Consonant classes are simplified into four classes. Extra high loci (near vertical formant loci) denotes affricates and stridents, rising loci denotes alveolar, medial (loci just above the vowel formant) denotes palatal, and falling (low loci) denotes pharyngeal, labial, and fricative. This gives 8 whistled consonants, but including tone gradual decay (with intensity falling off) as a feature on continuous and interrupted sounds gives 10 consonants. In these situations gradual decay is given +voice, and continuous is given +liquid.Other sources
- Batista, J.J. and M. Morera, eds., (2007) El Silbo Gomero : 125 años de estudios lingüísticos y etnográficos. Islas Canarias : Academía Canaria de la Lengua.
- Díaz Reyes, D. (2008). El lenguaje silbado en la Isla de El Hierro. Excmo. Cabildo Insular de El Hierro. Santa Cruz de Tenerife.
- Meyer, J., Meunier, F., Dentel, L. (2007) Identification of natural whistled vowels by non whistlers. Proceedings of Interspeech 2007.
- Trujillo, R. (2006). El Silbo Gomero. Nuevo estudio fonológico (español-inglés / Spanish-English). Ed. Cuadernos de Dialectología de la Academia Canaria de la Lengua, Islas Canarias
- Rialland, A. (2003) A New Perspective on Silbo Gomero. Proceedings of the 15th International Conference of Phonetic Sciences, Barcelona.