WEBVTT - The Whistling, Part 1 0:00:03.040 --> 0:00:05.360 Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of My 0:00:05.480 --> 0:00:14.239 Heart Radio. Hey are you welcome to Stuff to Blow 0:00:14.280 --> 0:00:17.200 Your Mind? My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, 0:00:17.200 --> 0:00:19.520 and today we're going to be kicking off a multi 0:00:19.680 --> 0:00:24.200 part series about whistling. This is one of those topics 0:00:24.239 --> 0:00:27.640 I hope in in classic Stuff to Blow Your Mind fashion, 0:00:27.760 --> 0:00:30.840 we will be able to really surprise you how much 0:00:30.920 --> 0:00:33.840 weird and interesting stuff there is to learn about whistling 0:00:33.880 --> 0:00:36.519 around the world. That's right, I mean we will. We 0:00:36.560 --> 0:00:39.560 will make it weird. We will be weird in episode one, 0:00:39.720 --> 0:00:43.720 so strap in. Yeah. So. One of the first things 0:00:43.760 --> 0:00:45.800 that I wanted to talk about, and I think this 0:00:45.880 --> 0:00:47.960 is something we'll have to revisit in multiple parts of 0:00:47.960 --> 0:00:53.280 this series is the idea of whistled languages. Much to 0:00:53.360 --> 0:00:56.720 my surprise after reading about this subject, there are multiple 0:00:56.760 --> 0:01:00.720 examples from around the globe of whistled languages, or at 0:01:00.800 --> 0:01:06.360 least whistled alternate versions of an existing spoken language and two. 0:01:06.360 --> 0:01:08.639 So to kick us off, I wanted to talk about 0:01:08.720 --> 0:01:12.720 one particular example of a whistled language. I was reading 0:01:12.720 --> 0:01:16.320 about this in a classic linguistics paper from nineteen forty 0:01:16.400 --> 0:01:21.640 eight by George M. Cowen called Maso Teco Whistle Speech. 0:01:21.800 --> 0:01:25.959 This was published in the journal Language in nineteen forty eight. Uh. 0:01:25.959 --> 0:01:28.480 It's by this scholar named George M. Cowan who lived 0:01:28.520 --> 0:01:33.120 nineteen sixteen through seventeen. He was an expert on linguistics. 0:01:33.120 --> 0:01:37.080 He was associated with the Summer Institute of Linguistics, and 0:01:37.240 --> 0:01:40.200 apparently this paper is one of his most important contributions 0:01:40.240 --> 0:01:45.680 to the field. So it's an article documenting this fascinating 0:01:45.760 --> 0:01:50.240 type of communication practiced by the Mazo tech people living 0:01:50.280 --> 0:01:53.960 in Wahaca, Mexico. So what we're talking about here is 0:01:54.000 --> 0:01:58.200 an alternate form of the maze Teco language that is 0:01:58.240 --> 0:02:02.880 based entirely on whistles. Cowen writes that as of the 0:02:02.960 --> 0:02:07.480 nineteen forty Mexican Census, there were approximately sixty thou people 0:02:08.080 --> 0:02:11.680 in the Mazatec tribe, and almost fifty six thousand of 0:02:11.720 --> 0:02:15.200 them were mono lingual speakers of of the ma Azotecan languages. 0:02:15.760 --> 0:02:19.280 The Mazotecan languages are part of what Cowen here calls 0:02:19.320 --> 0:02:22.520 the Popa Loca Mezteco language family, so part of a 0:02:22.560 --> 0:02:27.440 broader association of languages found in this area. So Cowen 0:02:27.520 --> 0:02:31.080 spent several winters in the nineteen forties living among speakers 0:02:31.120 --> 0:02:36.160 of the Mezoteken languages to document uh these languages and 0:02:36.240 --> 0:02:39.200 eventually the whistle speech. And I want to begin by 0:02:39.200 --> 0:02:43.919 reading an anecdote that he just observed during his time there. Quote. 0:02:44.240 --> 0:02:47.920 Eusebio Martinez was observed one day standing in front of 0:02:47.960 --> 0:02:51.440 his hut whistling to a man a considerable distance away. 0:02:52.080 --> 0:02:54.680 The man was passing on the trail below, going to 0:02:54.720 --> 0:02:57.080 market to sell a load of corn leaves, which he 0:02:57.160 --> 0:03:01.080 was carrying. The man answered Eusebio's whist with a whistle. 0:03:01.400 --> 0:03:05.359 The interchange was repeated several times with different whistles. Finally, 0:03:05.400 --> 0:03:08.520 the man turned around, retraced his steps a short way, 0:03:08.760 --> 0:03:12.079 and came up the footpath to U. CBO's hut. Without 0:03:12.200 --> 0:03:15.040 saying a word, he dumped his load on the ground. U. 0:03:15.080 --> 0:03:18.240 Sabio looked the load over, went into his hut, returned 0:03:18.240 --> 0:03:21.120 with some money, and paid the man his price. The 0:03:21.160 --> 0:03:24.480 man turned and left. Not a word had been spoken. 0:03:24.840 --> 0:03:27.560 They had talked, bargained over the price, and come to 0:03:27.600 --> 0:03:31.840 an agreement satisfactory to both parties, using only whistles as 0:03:31.880 --> 0:03:36.760 a medium of communication. And this is not an isolated incident. Uh. 0:03:37.040 --> 0:03:40.880 The author here writes that the Mazotec people frequently hold 0:03:41.080 --> 0:03:44.920 entire conversations and express an extremely broad and versatile set 0:03:44.920 --> 0:03:49.120 of ideas, all using whistles. As he puts it, quote, 0:03:49.160 --> 0:03:52.280 the Maso Teco is frequently conversed by whistling to one another. 0:03:52.520 --> 0:03:56.600 The whistles are not merely signals with limited semantic value, 0:03:56.760 --> 0:04:00.320 arrived at by common agreement, but are parallel to spoken 0:04:00.400 --> 0:04:04.960 conversations as a means of communication. And so to to 0:04:05.040 --> 0:04:08.720 try to uh elucidate that a little bit, what this 0:04:08.840 --> 0:04:12.160 means is that the whistle speech is not a code 0:04:12.600 --> 0:04:15.080 like you may have heard, you may have seen in movies, 0:04:15.160 --> 0:04:17.880 I don't know, like like soldiers crawling around and they 0:04:17.920 --> 0:04:20.080 sort of like whistle codes at each other, And you 0:04:20.120 --> 0:04:23.440 get the idea that maybe they've agreed on a handful 0:04:23.600 --> 0:04:26.440 of whistled signals in advance, like you know that one 0:04:26.480 --> 0:04:30.280 whistle means a stop, another one means go forward, And 0:04:30.440 --> 0:04:34.040 but there's probably a very limited array of those whistles, 0:04:34.080 --> 0:04:36.720 and you had to work on agreeing to them beforehand, 0:04:36.839 --> 0:04:40.279 right right. Also in contrast to how the sort of 0:04:40.320 --> 0:04:43.120 every day and in our world you will encounter. You know, 0:04:43.160 --> 0:04:45.760 a handful of uses of whistles that have sort of 0:04:46.000 --> 0:04:48.719 agreed upon meaning sort of a whistle that is an 0:04:48.760 --> 0:04:51.799 attention grabber, and a whistle that might be a little 0:04:51.800 --> 0:04:55.200 more scandalous, and then a whistle that is it seems 0:04:55.240 --> 0:04:59.359 to say say whoa, uh, like that's a big truck 0:04:59.839 --> 0:05:02.799 h something of that nature. But but it's not really, 0:05:02.960 --> 0:05:05.520 it's nothing at all like a robust language of whistles. 0:05:05.560 --> 0:05:08.880 It's just a few basic whistle signals that seem to 0:05:08.880 --> 0:05:11.480 be commonly used. Yeah, that's right, I would say, Like 0:05:11.520 --> 0:05:14.920 in the standard American English speaking context, there are a 0:05:14.960 --> 0:05:19.040 few sort of significant whistles. You you basically know what 0:05:19.080 --> 0:05:20.760 they mean when you hear them, but there's only a 0:05:20.760 --> 0:05:23.280 handful of them, and you certainly can't make sentences out 0:05:23.320 --> 0:05:27.000 of them. Exactly the opposite is true of the Mazo 0:05:27.040 --> 0:05:31.240 Teco whistle speech. Uh. This is a a full equivalent 0:05:31.440 --> 0:05:35.840 to the standard spoken Meso Teco language. The whistles can 0:05:35.880 --> 0:05:40.159 be recorded and translated by anybody familiar with the whistle speech, 0:05:40.240 --> 0:05:44.760 producing the same specific translations with a couple of uh, 0:05:45.320 --> 0:05:48.280 certain kinds of ambiguities. I'll get into that later. So 0:05:48.320 --> 0:05:51.320 it's not a kind of loose suggestive code. It's not 0:05:51.400 --> 0:05:54.040 something that's to be agreed on ahead of time. It's 0:05:54.080 --> 0:05:57.720 just an equivalent of a spoken language with all the 0:05:57.720 --> 0:06:01.520 freedom of degrees of expression and lexical richness found in 0:06:01.560 --> 0:06:04.279 the spoken language. And I thought this was just amazing. 0:06:04.720 --> 0:06:06.560 So I guess I want to explore a few more 0:06:06.600 --> 0:06:09.880 things that the Cowen documents that he observed about the 0:06:10.400 --> 0:06:14.440 whistle speech during his time in Wahaka in the nineteen forties. 0:06:14.920 --> 0:06:17.839 So he says also that um the mesa teco people 0:06:18.120 --> 0:06:21.880 use the whistle signals when communicating with animals. For example, 0:06:21.920 --> 0:06:25.080 there's a sort of slow up gliding whistle to keep 0:06:25.120 --> 0:06:28.280 burrows moving when on the trail, or whistles to call 0:06:28.320 --> 0:06:32.200 out to dogs. But these whistles don't have a translatable 0:06:32.279 --> 0:06:36.479 language equivalent. So there is whistling that is language. But 0:06:36.560 --> 0:06:40.520 then there's also a whole set of like whistle sounds 0:06:40.520 --> 0:06:44.320 that are useful day to day but are not words. Yeah, 0:06:44.320 --> 0:06:48.440 they just they want to be translated. They'd be like hey, yeah, 0:06:48.560 --> 0:06:53.800 or keep walking, keep going another thing. Not everybody whistles, 0:06:54.000 --> 0:06:58.200 and not everybody who whistles whistles the same amount. Cowen 0:06:58.240 --> 0:07:03.440 writes that while everyone seems to have listening fluency with 0:07:03.520 --> 0:07:08.120 the whistled speech, generally only men whistle, and especially men 0:07:08.320 --> 0:07:11.800 between the ages of boyhood and middle age. So he 0:07:11.800 --> 0:07:15.920 says old men rarely whistle conversationally. It seems to fade 0:07:15.960 --> 0:07:21.160 out over the lifespan, and women and girls understand what 0:07:21.320 --> 0:07:23.840 is whistled by the men and boys, but usually do 0:07:23.920 --> 0:07:27.480 not whistle themselves. So he talks about observing a bunch 0:07:27.520 --> 0:07:31.520 of interactions where like a boy would whistle something to 0:07:31.640 --> 0:07:34.360 a girl his age, and the girl would reply with 0:07:34.400 --> 0:07:37.920 spoken language, so she understands the whistles, but she doesn't 0:07:38.080 --> 0:07:41.760 use them herself. He even talks about one specific example 0:07:41.800 --> 0:07:44.559 of like a boy teasing a girl and he didn't 0:07:44.600 --> 0:07:47.840 realize what was happening because he he just observed the 0:07:47.920 --> 0:07:50.760 boy whistling. He didn't realize it was speech, and suddenly 0:07:50.800 --> 0:07:52.840 the girl lashed out and hit the boy with the 0:07:52.960 --> 0:07:56.000 broom because of what he'd been saying to her, except 0:07:56.040 --> 0:07:59.720 he hadn't been using the spoken language. Interesting, Okay, so 0:08:00.080 --> 0:08:04.560 the former we have perhaps a physical reason for the limit, 0:08:04.840 --> 0:08:07.400 but possibly cultural, and then the second one seems to 0:08:07.400 --> 0:08:09.960 be definitely cultural. Yeah, I don't know if there's a 0:08:10.080 --> 0:08:12.960 if there's like a biological limitation on on older men 0:08:13.000 --> 0:08:15.720 whistling either, I mean, it seems like this is probably 0:08:15.760 --> 0:08:18.960 all cultural convention. Yeah. I think with older men, based 0:08:18.960 --> 0:08:20.680 on what I've been reading, it would be it would 0:08:20.680 --> 0:08:22.720 be kind of a case to case situation. You certainly 0:08:22.720 --> 0:08:27.040 have older gentlemen who are profound whistlers, but there are 0:08:27.560 --> 0:08:30.000 there's certainly cases even in younger people where if there 0:08:30.080 --> 0:08:34.880 changes to one's mouth uh, due to injury, due to 0:08:35.200 --> 0:08:38.400 just changes in dental health, then that could impact one's 0:08:38.440 --> 0:08:40.840 ability to whistle. Well. So a big question here would 0:08:40.840 --> 0:08:44.400 be why. I mean, this is an interesting and beautiful 0:08:44.480 --> 0:08:47.040 thing about this language that it has the you know, 0:08:47.080 --> 0:08:50.760 the spoken language and then it's whistled twin. But like, 0:08:50.920 --> 0:08:54.480 what would cause a whistled version of a language to 0:08:54.600 --> 0:08:57.400 develop like this? And I think one good way to 0:08:57.480 --> 0:08:59.560 get some insight into that is to look at what 0:08:59.760 --> 0:09:03.360 are the common occasions for people to use the whistled 0:09:03.480 --> 0:09:06.760 version of their language instead of the spoken version. And 0:09:06.800 --> 0:09:08.520 one of the big answers here is pretty clear. The 0:09:08.520 --> 0:09:11.280 author here says that the most frequent use of the 0:09:11.280 --> 0:09:14.559 whistle speech was observed when the speakers were at a 0:09:14.640 --> 0:09:19.400 distance from each other, he writes quote. Men scattered widely 0:09:19.440 --> 0:09:22.240 over a mountain side, each working in his own plot 0:09:22.280 --> 0:09:25.320 of ground, will often talk to one another with whistles. 0:09:25.920 --> 0:09:28.480 Travelers on the trails will keep in touch with one 0:09:28.520 --> 0:09:33.080 another by whistling, though separated by considerable distance. When wishing 0:09:33.080 --> 0:09:36.120 to call or get the attention of someone, even though 0:09:36.160 --> 0:09:39.440 he be within easy speaking distance, the masa tecos will 0:09:39.520 --> 0:09:43.640 often whistle his name. The village shoemaker often calls passers 0:09:43.640 --> 0:09:45.680 by into his shop with a whistle to chat with 0:09:45.760 --> 0:09:48.120 him while he works. A man may come to a 0:09:48.160 --> 0:09:51.200 friend's hut on a visit. While approaching, or when he 0:09:51.240 --> 0:09:53.160 has actually arrived at the door of the hut, he 0:09:53.200 --> 0:09:57.120 will frequently whistle rather than call his friend's name. If 0:09:57.160 --> 0:09:59.760 the friend is home, he may respond from within with 0:09:59.840 --> 0:10:02.560 a whistle, then come out to greet his visitor, or 0:10:02.600 --> 0:10:05.520 he may remain inside and whistle to his visitor to 0:10:05.600 --> 0:10:09.920 come in. Fascinating Okay, so communicating at a distance seems 0:10:09.960 --> 0:10:13.640 to be a big one, or also initiating communication at 0:10:13.679 --> 0:10:16.840 the start of an encounter, which I think it's interesting 0:10:16.880 --> 0:10:19.679 that even when we're not at a distance, we often 0:10:19.960 --> 0:10:23.320 use language that we employ at a distance. Like to 0:10:23.360 --> 0:10:26.160 get somebody in a spoken language. To get somebody's attention 0:10:26.200 --> 0:10:28.120 from far away, what do you do? You yell hey 0:10:28.200 --> 0:10:30.400 at them? But also what do you do when you 0:10:30.520 --> 0:10:32.880 walk up and and see somebody you know, your two 0:10:32.880 --> 0:10:34.880 feet away from them? You say, oh hey? And there 0:10:34.960 --> 0:10:36.600 might be some sort of a wave or something in 0:10:36.640 --> 0:10:38.679 there as well, And I could I can imagine, I 0:10:39.160 --> 0:10:41.320 don't know if it so sure, I can imagine where 0:10:41.320 --> 0:10:43.640 if whistling could maybe take the place of some of 0:10:43.679 --> 0:10:49.040 the otherwise necessary waving or gesticulating that would be required 0:10:49.080 --> 0:10:52.080 to get somebody's attention and say, hey here, I am, 0:10:52.120 --> 0:10:55.520 there you are, let's converse right, So okay, So you've 0:10:55.520 --> 0:10:59.319 got communicating at a distance, you've got initiating communication at 0:10:59.320 --> 0:11:01.559 the start of a of a meeting, and then along 0:11:01.559 --> 0:11:04.160 the same lines. Uh. He writes here that the whistle 0:11:04.200 --> 0:11:06.800 is sometimes used as a warning, such as when someone 0:11:06.920 --> 0:11:09.960 unknown is seen approaching on the trail, you kind of 0:11:09.960 --> 0:11:12.680 whistle to let all of your friends nearby know that 0:11:12.760 --> 0:11:15.880 something's up, you know, to get their attention. Though again 0:11:15.920 --> 0:11:18.800 he says the most common occasion is talking at a distance, 0:11:18.840 --> 0:11:21.600 and he writes that in these cases, men working in 0:11:21.600 --> 0:11:24.120 the field seem to be able to communicate easily with 0:11:24.200 --> 0:11:27.040 people a full quarter of a mile away, like on 0:11:27.080 --> 0:11:30.840 the opposite mountain side using the whistle speech. But also 0:11:31.120 --> 0:11:33.400 and I found I found this next part really interesting. 0:11:34.040 --> 0:11:39.120 Count says that sometimes, especially boys will hold a whistle 0:11:39.240 --> 0:11:43.959 conversation if they're trying to talk while older people are 0:11:44.000 --> 0:11:48.319 also nearby carrying on a spoken conversation or even singing together. 0:11:48.840 --> 0:11:53.199 And he calls these sort of simultaneous whistled conversations subdued 0:11:53.280 --> 0:11:57.080 whistles and says that they're that they're quite audible, and 0:11:57.160 --> 0:12:01.520 yet they are able to happen simultaneous lee without seeming 0:12:01.559 --> 0:12:04.880 too much interfere with the spoken conversation of the adults. 0:12:05.480 --> 0:12:08.120 And I don't know that one seems really interesting to me. 0:12:08.160 --> 0:12:11.800 I mean, it reminds me of of being a kid 0:12:11.880 --> 0:12:13.959 and wanting to talk to other kids while they're I 0:12:14.000 --> 0:12:15.880 don't know, while you're in class or something, when you're 0:12:15.880 --> 0:12:19.040 not supposed to be doing that. Uh, And and there 0:12:19.120 --> 0:12:22.400 there's just an obvious sort of clash between two sets 0:12:22.400 --> 0:12:25.240 of spoken words going on at the same time. And 0:12:25.280 --> 0:12:27.640 this gets the ire of the adults, not only because 0:12:27.640 --> 0:12:31.080 you're not paying attention, but because you're distracting others. Yet 0:12:31.160 --> 0:12:35.280 somehow I could imagine that. Yeah, maybe having like a 0:12:35.320 --> 0:12:39.079 different form of the language. If you're speaking your language 0:12:39.080 --> 0:12:42.319 based on whistles instead of with the normal of phonetic syllables, 0:12:43.160 --> 0:12:48.200 that could allow a kind of simultaneity without so much conflict. Yeah, 0:12:48.320 --> 0:12:51.040 a way to speak while the adults are speaking without 0:12:51.080 --> 0:12:54.520 interfering with what they're doing. Now, the example of of 0:12:54.640 --> 0:12:57.120 using the whistles to communicate saying, in the case of 0:12:57.120 --> 0:13:01.120 a path, uh, you're in the woods, someone's coming. That 0:13:01.200 --> 0:13:04.280 reminds me that I And I'm making an assumption here, 0:13:04.320 --> 0:13:08.680 But if one were to say, hey, Carl, there's somebody 0:13:08.679 --> 0:13:12.280 coming and call out, well, not only are communicating to Carl, 0:13:12.280 --> 0:13:16.439 but you're communing communicating something about yourself. I wonder if 0:13:16.559 --> 0:13:20.960 whistling language in specific scenarios like this allow you to 0:13:21.080 --> 0:13:25.280 communicate without tipping your hand at all regarding like who 0:13:25.320 --> 0:13:28.000 you are, like what your age is, what your gender is, 0:13:28.480 --> 0:13:31.440 et cetera. Oh huh, that I didn't think about that. 0:13:31.440 --> 0:13:34.240 That's interesting. Um. Well, another thing I would say along 0:13:34.240 --> 0:13:38.120 those same lines is, again I haven't done experiments to 0:13:38.160 --> 0:13:40.199 confirm this, but I would just say, as a baseline, 0:13:40.280 --> 0:13:44.439 I might assume that whistling can more easily blend in 0:13:44.480 --> 0:13:48.000 with nature than than spoken language. That like you hear 0:13:48.000 --> 0:13:51.280 spoken language, you instantly know a person is nearby you 0:13:51.320 --> 0:13:53.079 hear a little whistle. I don't know that could be 0:13:53.160 --> 0:13:55.880 a bird or something like that if you're not tuned 0:13:55.920 --> 0:13:59.000 into it as a linguistic signal. And I think that's 0:13:59.000 --> 0:14:02.200 where and that's certainly where my assumption come comes into play, 0:14:02.240 --> 0:14:05.480 is that I'm not sure what it would be like 0:14:05.880 --> 0:14:08.400 for someone who who has lived in the world of 0:14:08.400 --> 0:14:10.920 this kind of whistling. If you're used to it, then 0:14:10.920 --> 0:14:14.200 maybe you just you have heightened susceptibility to recognizing it 0:14:14.280 --> 0:14:17.080 and and telling the difference between it in the natural world. 0:14:17.320 --> 0:14:20.280 And likewise, perhaps if you're used to it, you can 0:14:20.320 --> 0:14:23.760 definitely tell the difference between a man's whistling a boy's 0:14:23.760 --> 0:14:32.240 whistle than well. So to round out the things that 0:14:32.720 --> 0:14:35.920 the Cowen talks about in this article, he says, um uh, 0:14:36.120 --> 0:14:38.840 that there are no lexical limitations on the whistle speech. 0:14:39.200 --> 0:14:42.040 Sort of already got to this, but basically anything you 0:14:42.040 --> 0:14:44.840 can express in spoken language you can express in the whistles. 0:14:45.600 --> 0:14:50.040 Um However, there are some ambiguities caused by the whistle speech, 0:14:50.560 --> 0:14:55.200 and this is because of the basic phonetic features of it. 0:14:55.600 --> 0:15:00.360 So the massive Taken languages are tonal languages. This would 0:15:00.400 --> 0:15:03.880 mean they're similar to like Mandarin, where you can have 0:15:04.280 --> 0:15:07.840 a syllable and you can have maybe four different versions 0:15:07.880 --> 0:15:10.800 of that syllable, and in English they would all be 0:15:10.880 --> 0:15:14.000 the same syllable to us, Like maybe the classic example 0:15:14.040 --> 0:15:17.640 in Mandarin is four different ways of saying ma, but 0:15:17.840 --> 0:15:21.320 pronounced in each case with a different tone, So you 0:15:21.360 --> 0:15:23.560 would you know, and if you're trying to write them 0:15:23.560 --> 0:15:26.000 out phonetically in English, they would all be m A. 0:15:26.600 --> 0:15:29.320 But one might be a kind of gliding up tone 0:15:29.440 --> 0:15:32.800 and one is a falling tone and so forth. Yeah, well, 0:15:32.840 --> 0:15:35.160 them as a taken languages are like this too. They 0:15:35.200 --> 0:15:39.240 have tones in the speech, and the tones are what 0:15:39.440 --> 0:15:43.240 eventually becomes the whistle speech. The whistle speech is based 0:15:43.320 --> 0:15:47.680 on the tonal features of the spoken language. But if 0:15:47.760 --> 0:15:51.040 you have, say, two different phrases that in the spoken 0:15:51.120 --> 0:15:55.160 language have the exact same sequences of tones, these can 0:15:55.240 --> 0:15:57.880 of course cause ambiguity in the whistle speech, and that 0:15:57.920 --> 0:15:59.880 has to be resolved. You might have to say, what 0:16:00.280 --> 0:16:03.080 do you mean? Uh. Colin writes that one of the 0:16:03.080 --> 0:16:05.800 most common sources of ambiguity and whistled speech is just 0:16:05.920 --> 0:16:08.120 proper names, because there are a lot of proper names 0:16:08.120 --> 0:16:11.160 that have the same sequence of tones. But despite this 0:16:11.280 --> 0:16:14.400 limitation that you know, you you don't have spoken syllables, 0:16:14.440 --> 0:16:18.480 you're just turning the language entirely into sequences of tones. Uh. 0:16:18.880 --> 0:16:20.960 You can communicate a lot, and most of the time 0:16:20.960 --> 0:16:24.000 people understand each other just fine. Another thing I thought 0:16:24.040 --> 0:16:26.440 was interesting is that he says there don't appear to 0:16:26.440 --> 0:16:31.240 be any limitations on whistled speech mingling with spoken language. 0:16:31.320 --> 0:16:33.520 Like it's not like you go into one mode and 0:16:33.520 --> 0:16:35.720 then you're supposed to stay there and back and forth, 0:16:35.720 --> 0:16:38.520 and like he says that a conversation might start at 0:16:38.520 --> 0:16:41.640 a distance as whistles as whistles, and then switch to 0:16:41.720 --> 0:16:44.000 normal speech when the parties get closer to each other, 0:16:44.640 --> 0:16:46.240 or you might just go back and forth. You might 0:16:46.240 --> 0:16:52.400 be speaking and then suddenly whistling, and then and so forth. Interesting. This, um, this, 0:16:52.400 --> 0:16:55.440 this is not not a perfect comparison, but I and 0:16:55.520 --> 0:16:58.440 I can't help but think of the astro mac droids 0:16:58.480 --> 0:17:02.120 and star Wars. You know, how they speak with the 0:17:02.240 --> 0:17:07.320 kind of whistling UM language uh and and generally when 0:17:07.320 --> 0:17:11.080 they're talking to somebody like Luke Skywalker or whoever, Luke 0:17:11.200 --> 0:17:14.760 understands the astro Mec language and then speaks back in 0:17:14.840 --> 0:17:19.040 English and UH or whatever we're calling English UM in 0:17:19.080 --> 0:17:22.919 the Star Wars universe. And at times when I'm watching this, 0:17:22.960 --> 0:17:25.440 I'm always I'll stop and I'll think. And of course 0:17:25.440 --> 0:17:26.720 i'm you know, caught up in the flow of it, 0:17:26.760 --> 0:17:29.960 so it ultimately doesn't matter. But if I'm over analyzing it, 0:17:30.080 --> 0:17:32.320 I'm I'm thinking about the fact that they're they're speaking 0:17:32.320 --> 0:17:35.680 in two different languages to each other and there doesn't 0:17:35.680 --> 0:17:38.199 seem to be any problem. But an example like this 0:17:38.280 --> 0:17:40.800 from the real world makes me think, well, no, this 0:17:40.920 --> 0:17:44.200 is entirely believable. You have both parties know the language, 0:17:44.240 --> 0:17:46.680 but the astro Mec of course can only speak one 0:17:46.680 --> 0:17:49.960 of those languages, and Luke Skywalker can also only speak 0:17:49.960 --> 0:17:53.480 one of those languages, but both can understand. Yeah, that's interesting. 0:17:53.480 --> 0:17:56.360 I have often thought about that too, about the how 0:17:56.400 --> 0:18:00.200 exactly the R two D two communication goes on um 0:18:00.400 --> 0:18:02.240 a boat. But I just wanted to say also that 0:18:02.280 --> 0:18:04.639 like um, this isn't something of the past that the 0:18:04.640 --> 0:18:07.719 Massa teco whistle speech is still in use today, certainly 0:18:07.760 --> 0:18:10.959 by people in Wahaka and maybe elsewhere as well. If 0:18:11.000 --> 0:18:12.520 you want to hear what it sounds like, I would 0:18:12.560 --> 0:18:15.959 highly recommend looking up videos. There are videos you can 0:18:16.000 --> 0:18:19.679 find online of native speakers demonstrating the Messa teco whistle 0:18:19.720 --> 0:18:23.720 speech and it's it's it's totally worth looking up. Absolutely yeah, 0:18:23.720 --> 0:18:27.440 it's it's. It's quite beautiful. But as I alluded to earlier, 0:18:27.800 --> 0:18:29.719 this is not the only case in the world. This 0:18:29.760 --> 0:18:32.320 is just one example I picked. There are other examples 0:18:32.320 --> 0:18:34.040 and I might get into them in in part two 0:18:34.119 --> 0:18:39.000 of this series of whistled languages popping up, especially it 0:18:39.119 --> 0:18:43.280 seems in in mountainous and forested regions around the world. 0:18:43.640 --> 0:18:45.320 And there's a paper I want to talk about in 0:18:45.359 --> 0:18:48.000 the next part of the series about what are some 0:18:48.040 --> 0:18:51.199 of the common features that may cause whistled versions of 0:18:51.280 --> 0:18:54.679 languages to arise. It's very interesting to think about, like 0:18:54.760 --> 0:18:59.600 what are the pressures and environmental characteristics that tend to 0:18:59.680 --> 0:19:05.600 give rise to certain characteristics of language. Absolutely now in 0:19:05.880 --> 0:19:10.399 discussing whistling here uh. When we first started looking into 0:19:10.440 --> 0:19:15.080 this topic, I was thinking, well, what is whistling and 0:19:15.440 --> 0:19:17.560 I at first I was thinking, well, this has to 0:19:17.560 --> 0:19:20.120 be one of those questions that shouldn't be too complicated, right, 0:19:20.720 --> 0:19:23.080 in part because for many of us, a whistle is 0:19:23.200 --> 0:19:25.520 literally as close as our own breath. We can produce 0:19:25.520 --> 0:19:28.679 a whistle without giving it too much thought, and we 0:19:28.720 --> 0:19:32.480 can generally pick out the sound of whistling rather easily. 0:19:32.520 --> 0:19:35.639 Maybe not, you know, as as quickly as we were 0:19:35.640 --> 0:19:37.960 discussing in our previous example compared to other things. But 0:19:38.320 --> 0:19:40.440 here it for a second, and you'll say, yeah, yeah, 0:19:40.480 --> 0:19:42.679 somebody's whistling, and then maybe you can pick out the tune. 0:19:43.359 --> 0:19:45.800 But yeah, we know it when we hear it, and 0:19:45.840 --> 0:19:48.760 we know it when we produce it. So I honestly 0:19:48.800 --> 0:19:51.680 expected to kind of springboard past the basic what is 0:19:51.720 --> 0:19:54.320 a whistle question here and so get more into some 0:19:54.400 --> 0:19:58.639 of the meteor stuff. But then I read this definition 0:19:58.640 --> 0:20:01.840 of whistling from the paper The Physiology of Oral Whistling 0:20:02.080 --> 0:20:04.399 by A. Zola at All, published in the Journal of 0:20:04.400 --> 0:20:11.239 Applied Physiology. Quote. Experimental models support the hypothesis that the 0:20:11.320 --> 0:20:15.640 sound in human whistling is generated by a helm Holtz resonator, 0:20:15.960 --> 0:20:19.720 suggesting that the oral cavity acts as a resonant chamber 0:20:20.000 --> 0:20:24.119 bounded by two orifices, posteriorly by raising the tongue to 0:20:24.160 --> 0:20:28.119 the hard palate and anteriorly by pursed lips. So I 0:20:28.160 --> 0:20:31.200 don't know about you, but when I heard that that 0:20:31.280 --> 0:20:34.639 instantly it made me realize, Okay, it's a little more 0:20:34.680 --> 0:20:39.080 complicated than I had perhaps realized at first. And uh, 0:20:39.160 --> 0:20:41.359 I I don't think I had actually heard of a 0:20:41.400 --> 0:20:44.040 helm Holtz resonator before, and when I heard that, I 0:20:44.119 --> 0:20:47.080 instantly thought of like the Holtzman effect in Dune. But 0:20:47.160 --> 0:20:50.440 this has nothing to do with personal shields and suspensers. Well, yeah, 0:20:50.640 --> 0:20:53.159 I think that's interesting too, that it's like not a 0:20:53.200 --> 0:20:58.480 fully settled question how exactly the physics of of whistling work. 0:20:58.560 --> 0:21:00.200 But I do think it's clear and you can sort 0:21:00.200 --> 0:21:03.960 of test this in your own body. Uh. That part 0:21:04.000 --> 0:21:07.720 of what's happening with whistling is you are relocating the 0:21:07.760 --> 0:21:13.600 primary resonating chamber that's producing the vibrations the sound when 0:21:13.680 --> 0:21:16.359 you whistle, as opposed to when you produce regular speech. 0:21:16.440 --> 0:21:19.400 Because if you just feel it in your body while 0:21:19.440 --> 0:21:22.240 you're talking, you can kind of feel least I can 0:21:22.680 --> 0:21:25.560 that the vibrations sort of seemed to be coming from 0:21:25.600 --> 0:21:27.920 the throat. It's also sort of happening in the mouth 0:21:27.960 --> 0:21:31.280 a little bit um. But then when you whistle, at 0:21:31.320 --> 0:21:34.280 least what I feel is I feel the vibration beginning 0:21:34.400 --> 0:21:38.959 in my mouth. Yeah. I would certainly advise everyone as 0:21:39.000 --> 0:21:40.840 you're whistling, and you may be whistling right now, to 0:21:40.920 --> 0:21:43.239 sort of test this out, like, really focus in on 0:21:43.280 --> 0:21:46.720 how it feels, Focus on how you feel the air 0:21:46.840 --> 0:21:52.719 flowing through your mouth. You'll find these lateral air passages 0:21:52.800 --> 0:21:55.720 between cheek and molars. Uh. And it's it's really quite 0:21:55.800 --> 0:21:57.919 quite fascinating because again, it's easy to just take this 0:21:58.000 --> 0:22:00.919 for granted, it's not something for most of us. Is 0:22:00.920 --> 0:22:02.840 certainly after after a point, you don't really have to 0:22:02.840 --> 0:22:04.800 think about it. You don't have to have to look 0:22:04.920 --> 0:22:07.199 up and read instructions for how to do it. You 0:22:07.320 --> 0:22:10.840 just your mouth assumes the form necessary to create the whistle, 0:22:11.160 --> 0:22:14.439 and you whistle as a total sidetrack. I'm sorry, but 0:22:14.600 --> 0:22:17.400 I I found the title of that paper, The Physiology 0:22:17.400 --> 0:22:20.960 of Oral Whistling, very funny because it immediately made me think, 0:22:20.960 --> 0:22:25.240 are there other types of whistle? Is there ocular whistling? Well? There, 0:22:26.080 --> 0:22:27.520 I mean, I guess there may be some sort of 0:22:27.640 --> 0:22:30.720 nasal variety. I mean, I'm instantly reminded of the various 0:22:30.800 --> 0:22:34.800 nasal flutes that exist in different cultures. So, uh, the 0:22:34.880 --> 0:22:37.119 airflow from the mouth is not the only way that 0:22:37.200 --> 0:22:40.440 we have to produce a sound. So um. But yeah, 0:22:40.840 --> 0:22:44.600 when you say whistling, you tend to think oral whistling. Now, 0:22:44.640 --> 0:22:47.920 I want to come back to the Helmholtz resonator here. 0:22:48.480 --> 0:22:52.280