WEBVTT - How Do Whistled Languages Work?

0:00:01.920 --> 0:00:04.320
<v Speaker 1>Welcome to brain Stuff, a production of I Heart Radio,

0:00:06.240 --> 0:00:10.560
<v Speaker 1>Hey brain Stuff, Lauren Volga bomb here. When you, a

0:00:10.720 --> 0:00:15.120
<v Speaker 1>human want to audibly communicate with another human, you generally

0:00:15.400 --> 0:00:19.120
<v Speaker 1>use your voice. A speech happens when air passes through

0:00:19.160 --> 0:00:22.120
<v Speaker 1>your larynx or voice box and is added to noises

0:00:22.160 --> 0:00:26.360
<v Speaker 1>made with your throat, nasal passages, sinuses, and mouth. This

0:00:26.480 --> 0:00:29.440
<v Speaker 1>is a great way to communicate, but there are some drawbacks.

0:00:30.320 --> 0:00:32.720
<v Speaker 1>Of course, there are people who have trouble making those

0:00:32.760 --> 0:00:35.960
<v Speaker 1>noises or hearing them due to any number of conditions.

0:00:36.479 --> 0:00:39.800
<v Speaker 1>But that aside. Let's take the particular instance of your

0:00:39.880 --> 0:00:43.120
<v Speaker 1>living on a mountain side and a friend living one

0:00:43.159 --> 0:00:47.360
<v Speaker 1>slope over. Just shouting to each other isn't always that effective.

0:00:48.000 --> 0:00:51.120
<v Speaker 1>For one thing, shouting creates a lot of echoes, among

0:00:51.200 --> 0:00:54.360
<v Speaker 1>them nooks and crannies of mountain slopes, and the average

0:00:54.360 --> 0:00:57.920
<v Speaker 1>outdoor range of an intelligible human voice is only about

0:00:58.000 --> 0:01:02.000
<v Speaker 1>five nine feet or on naighty meters under normal conditions.

0:01:02.800 --> 0:01:05.240
<v Speaker 1>Short of walking over to where your friend lives to

0:01:05.319 --> 0:01:08.720
<v Speaker 1>carry on a conversation at a reasonable speaking distance, or

0:01:08.840 --> 0:01:12.280
<v Speaker 1>communicating with some sort of visual technique, your next best

0:01:12.319 --> 0:01:17.280
<v Speaker 1>bet is to whistle. Whistling is the product of air

0:01:17.360 --> 0:01:20.240
<v Speaker 1>being forced through a small hole made by your lips.

0:01:20.800 --> 0:01:23.559
<v Speaker 1>A whistle is different from your voice because it's clear

0:01:23.920 --> 0:01:27.520
<v Speaker 1>and the frequency is narrow and high pitched. The sound

0:01:27.520 --> 0:01:29.960
<v Speaker 1>of a whistle can carry for more than five miles

0:01:30.040 --> 0:01:33.440
<v Speaker 1>or eight kilometers, and it holds its form, while a

0:01:33.560 --> 0:01:37.600
<v Speaker 1>shout can splinter into an echoing mess and birds have

0:01:37.640 --> 0:01:40.760
<v Speaker 1>discovered this and use it to communicate between treetops and

0:01:40.800 --> 0:01:45.640
<v Speaker 1>mountain sides the world over. So although humanity has relied

0:01:45.640 --> 0:01:49.200
<v Speaker 1>on spoken language for millennia to accomplish every day face

0:01:49.240 --> 0:01:52.600
<v Speaker 1>to face communication, there are more than seventy groups around

0:01:52.600 --> 0:01:56.760
<v Speaker 1>the world that engage in special whistled languages. Millions of

0:01:56.800 --> 0:01:59.760
<v Speaker 1>people speak them, although the advent of text messaging has

0:01:59.760 --> 0:02:04.360
<v Speaker 1>so only seen a dive in whistled language worldwide. They're

0:02:04.400 --> 0:02:07.640
<v Speaker 1>most commonly found in mountainous regions where shepherds or farmers

0:02:07.680 --> 0:02:10.800
<v Speaker 1>need to pass messages around without huffing and puffing up

0:02:10.800 --> 0:02:14.000
<v Speaker 1>and down hills to do so, but whistles are also

0:02:14.120 --> 0:02:17.480
<v Speaker 1>used to communicate through the impenetrable undergrowth of the Amazon

0:02:17.560 --> 0:02:20.840
<v Speaker 1>rainforest and are useful to the Inuit at sea as well.

0:02:22.200 --> 0:02:24.560
<v Speaker 1>The hunters can use whistling to speak to each other

0:02:24.600 --> 0:02:27.079
<v Speaker 1>in a way that won't alarm their prey the way

0:02:27.080 --> 0:02:30.640
<v Speaker 1>that voice produced language bight. Whistled languages have even been

0:02:30.720 --> 0:02:33.880
<v Speaker 1>useful in battle among soldiers fighting on the same side.

0:02:35.400 --> 0:02:38.200
<v Speaker 1>For the article, this episode is based on How Stuff Works.

0:02:38.280 --> 0:02:41.480
<v Speaker 1>Spoke with Julian Mayer, a researcher at the University of

0:02:41.520 --> 0:02:45.880
<v Speaker 1>Grenoble in France and author of Whistled Languages, a worldwide

0:02:45.880 --> 0:02:50.720
<v Speaker 1>inquiry on human whistled speech. He said, the most fascinating

0:02:50.720 --> 0:02:53.840
<v Speaker 1>thing about whistled languages is their bird like aspect, which

0:02:54.000 --> 0:02:57.799
<v Speaker 1>encodes the complexity of human languages while highlighting a tight

0:02:57.880 --> 0:03:02.880
<v Speaker 1>relation between human language and the ironment. He explained, when

0:03:02.880 --> 0:03:07.000
<v Speaker 1>whistled language is still present, it signals that traditional activities

0:03:07.040 --> 0:03:10.840
<v Speaker 1>are still commonly practiced and therefore a relationship with the

0:03:10.919 --> 0:03:16.320
<v Speaker 1>land is maintained. According to Mayer, whistled languages are commonly

0:03:16.360 --> 0:03:20.119
<v Speaker 1>based on the spoken language native to an area. For instance,

0:03:20.160 --> 0:03:23.840
<v Speaker 1>in southern China, where diversity of whistled languages is high,

0:03:24.000 --> 0:03:27.919
<v Speaker 1>spoken language is tonal, that is to say, the constants

0:03:27.919 --> 0:03:30.960
<v Speaker 1>and vowels decide the meaning of a word, as well

0:03:31.000 --> 0:03:33.920
<v Speaker 1>as the pitch. The whistle languages in this part of

0:03:34.000 --> 0:03:37.360
<v Speaker 1>China seem to match the musicality of the local speech,

0:03:37.760 --> 0:03:40.040
<v Speaker 1>and the pitch of the whistle can change the meaning

0:03:40.120 --> 0:03:44.120
<v Speaker 1>of a whistled sentence in places where the language is

0:03:44.160 --> 0:03:47.320
<v Speaker 1>not tonal, like in the mountainous Canary Island off the

0:03:47.360 --> 0:03:50.360
<v Speaker 1>coast of Spain, where a whistled language called seal bow

0:03:50.400 --> 0:03:54.520
<v Speaker 1>Camarrow is spoken. Spanish acts as a template for the

0:03:54.560 --> 0:03:58.040
<v Speaker 1>sounds used. The vowel sounds are mirrored in the shape

0:03:58.040 --> 0:04:01.240
<v Speaker 1>of the whistles, while constants are decided by the clip,

0:04:01.400 --> 0:04:05.400
<v Speaker 1>cadence and slides of the whistled tones. To hear it,

0:04:05.400 --> 0:04:08.440
<v Speaker 1>it seems wild that anyone would be able to understand

0:04:08.480 --> 0:04:12.720
<v Speaker 1>seal bogamarrow at all, but according to Mayer, whistled language

0:04:12.720 --> 0:04:15.160
<v Speaker 1>speakers around the world are found to be able to

0:04:15.240 --> 0:04:21.440
<v Speaker 1>understand about of what's communicated. Mayor conjectures that people are

0:04:21.520 --> 0:04:24.320
<v Speaker 1>able to understand whistled language for the same reason that

0:04:24.360 --> 0:04:27.040
<v Speaker 1>you can read a sentence full of words whose letters

0:04:27.040 --> 0:04:30.279
<v Speaker 1>have been jumbled. Our brains are desperate to make sense

0:04:30.320 --> 0:04:35.440
<v Speaker 1>of what's going on. Whistled languages have some neuroscientists rethinking

0:04:35.600 --> 0:04:39.000
<v Speaker 1>how language works in the brain. It's been commonly thought

0:04:39.000 --> 0:04:42.200
<v Speaker 1>that language is the exclusive purview of the left hemisphere

0:04:42.240 --> 0:04:45.720
<v Speaker 1>of the brain, but studies of whistled language speakers found

0:04:45.760 --> 0:04:48.559
<v Speaker 1>that these languages are handled by both sides of the brain,

0:04:49.000 --> 0:04:57.080
<v Speaker 1>much like music. Today's episode is based on the article

0:04:57.240 --> 0:05:00.000
<v Speaker 1>just put your lips together and blow how whizzled Language

0:05:00.120 --> 0:05:02.400
<v Speaker 1>his work on how stuff works dot Com. Written by

0:05:02.440 --> 0:05:05.240
<v Speaker 1>Jesslyn Shields. Brain Stuff is a production of I Heart

0:05:05.279 --> 0:05:07.680
<v Speaker 1>Radio in partnership with how stuff Works dot Com and

0:05:07.800 --> 0:05:10.880
<v Speaker 1>is produced by Tyler klang Ur. More podcasts from my

0:05:10.920 --> 0:05:13.920
<v Speaker 1>heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,

0:05:14.000 --> 0:05:15.840
<v Speaker 1>or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.