Gomeran whistle

Island of La Gomera.

The gomero whistle is a whistled language practiced by some inhabitants of the Canary Islands to communicate across ravines and valleys. The whistle transforms the vocalized sounds of any natural human language into tonal whistles recognizable from a distance. After the disappearance of the original Guanche language, nowadays it habitually codifies the Spanish language. The Gomero whistle allows messages to be exchanged over a distance of up to five kilometers. Practitioners of the Gomero whistle are usually known as whistlers.

History

Very little is known about the original Guanche language, but it is assumed that their phonetic system must have been simple enough to allow the whistled language to be efficient. The whistle was created by the island's first inhabitants, aborigines Canaries and was also spoken in El Hierro, Tenerife and Gran Canaria. In the XVI century, after the conquest of the Canary Islands, the last pre-Hispanic Gomeros adapted the whistle to the Spanish language, while the original language, the Guanche language, was becoming extinct. It was widely used in the 17th century period. By 1976, the whistle barely remained in El Hierro, where it had flourished for end of the XIX century.

La Gomera, the second smallest island, has physical and geographical characteristics that distinguish it from the other islands, so it is possible to understand the impact of the whistle on the island and the factors that helped make it possible, such as the orography of the island with the mountains and ravines. Its presence on the island, for more than four centuries, is stimulated by the rural environment, and it continues to be maintained in all its splendor. Many chroniclers' stories have been investigated and ancient historians, who show us that the whistle did exist in pre-Hispanic times, as a modality of the indigenous language, whose origin is not very clear, although there are theories that it may be in tribes on the African continent.

It is in the middle of the XX century when a clear decline in the use of this language can be observed. The factors that explain this situation are economic and technological. On the one hand, many speakers of the Silbo Gomero were forced to emigrate in search of work or better living conditions. On the other hand, technological development, such as the appearance of telephones, played a fundamental role in reducing the usefulness of language. Its survival in earlier stages had been based on its role in allowing communication despite the distance. It should be noted that in the period 1960-1980, many people abandoned agriculture and the increasingly large middle class, on many occasions did not encourage the transmission of this language, since it was negatively associated with the rural peasantry.

In the 1990s, a revitalization effort began, as well as initiatives launched by the community itself. In 1999, the revitalization of the silbo gomero went a step further with educational policies and other legislative measures that fostered such revitalization. It currently has official protection as an example of intangible cultural heritage.

Due to the danger of the whistle disappearing at the beginning of the XXI century, basically due to improvements in communications and Especially due to the disappearance of activities such as herding, in which it was most used, the Government of the Canary Islands regulated its learning at school and declared the Gomero whistle as ethnographic heritage of the Canary Islands in 1999. On September 30, 2009, the Gomero whistle was inscribed by Unesco on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, thanks in large part to the work carried out by the Canarian government. Isidro Ortiz Muñoz has taught whistling classes in schools on the island.

Whistlers

As pointed out in the 2009 UNESCO report, a large majority of people living on the island of La Gomera understand the language, but only those born before 1950 and the younger generations who have attended the school after 1999 can use this code fluently. This is because those born before 1950 learned the whistle through the elders at home, while the youngest who have attended school after 1999 learned it formally at school. Those born between 1950 and 1980 understand the whistle, but are unable to use it, since the language was little used and even had negative connotations. In some areas of the island the whistle is maintained, such as in Igualero or El Cercado, where It is common to use it to notify the neighbors or give orders to the dogs in charge of the cattle. The whistle has always been used for long distances, to avoid shouting and travel, as a means of communication for daily life.

Revitalization

When this means of communication was endangered at the end of the XX century, linguistic revitalization efforts were generated, both at the level of community, as well as at the government level. A combination of initiatives from the La Gomera community and policies implemented by the authorities have fostered the revitalization and maintenance of this cultural heritage. Revitalization efforts have been well documented by UNESCO as part of the procedures for its selection as part of the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2009. The revitalization of this living phenomenon was necessitated by the decline in number of whistlers on the island of La Gomera, largely caused by the emigrations that have occurred at present, so that the Gomeran whistle is in a more decadent situation. However, this valuable heritage has significant support in rural areas, since there is still an oral tradition that is transmitted from generation to generation, and the whistle from Gomero is still needed in the daily life of the towns. In addition, the support it receives from the large number of publications, exhibitions, films, contests, and research that are currently being published are proof of the importance of this phenomenon.

Community Initiatives

With the aim of preserving the Gomeran whistle for the island's youth, expert whistlers seek to obtain an authorization that allows them to teach the language freely and voluntarily in a dedicated center. This initiative of the older islanders has obtained numerous responses, from the associations of fathers and mothers to the schools themselves.

The first of many revitalization measures were adopted at the grassroots level, not by public or private entities, reflecting the attitude of Gomeros toward the silbo. The educational policies that were implemented later were inspired by them. The revitalization started through the grassroots levels and escalated to the highest government bodies.

Government Policies

On June 26, 1997, the Parliament of the Canary Islands approved the inclusion of the Gomeran whistle as part of the school curriculum. The Gomero whistle then became a compulsory subject in primary and secondary school starting in July 1999.

In addition, a Gomero Whistle School was created on the island for post-compulsory level students who wanted to continue learning the whistle until they became accredited professional instructors. The objective of this school is for its students to be able to teach the whistle to the inhabitants of La Gomera, but also to tourists, and thus contribute to its revitalization.

In the same way, it is intended to strengthen the gomeran whistle through a project to digitize all audio materials. Documentaries have also been made for local, national and even global distribution.

Features

According to different studies, the Gomeran whistle has few elements, among them two vowels, low and high (which sometimes diversifies into four, which from the highest to the lowest, are /i/, /e/, /a/, and /o, u/), and between four consonants: continuous grave, interrupted grave, continuous acute and interrupted acute, in which the phonemes that are confused are, respectively, /m, b, f, g, h/, /p, k/, /n, ñ, y, l, r, d/, and /t, t͡ʃ, s/. The language is a whistled form of the Gomeran dialect of Spanish. It is not the only language in which the whistle is used, as there are many more, but it is one of the most studied by researchers. The whistle replaces each vowel or consonant with a whistled sound. Whistles are distinguished based on pitch and continuity.

The Gomero whistle is a complicated language to learn, with its whistling techniques requiring physical precision, and a strength of the used body parts, which can only be acquired with practice. The whistle uses the tongue, lips and hands, which differs from conventional language, which uses the oral cavity to emit acoustic frequencies. Physical precision lies in the whistler's ability to vary frequencies at different speeds and to start and stop the production of sound waves. Methods of teaching these techniques have not changed substantially since the 19th century. The same tone can represent several sounds, which is why it has many fewer phonemes than Spanish. This means that communication through the whistle can be ambiguous. Context and word choice are important elements for effective communication.

Research

According to the studies of Ramón Trujillo Carreño, professor of General Grammar at the University of La Laguna, the whistled language uses six sounds, two of them called vowels and the other four as consonants, and more than 4,000 concepts (words) can be expressed. According to other investigations such as those of Clase (1957) in production, of Meyer, Meunier, Dentel (2007) in perception, and of Días Reyes (2008) in the conjunction of both, the whistlers and also the non-whistlers clearly identify the four vowels distinctive whistles /i/, /e/, /a/, /o/, although Carreño justifies this distinction as the result of the isolated articulation of these, so that, functionally, they are identical. Therefore, /o/ does not differ of /u/ in silbo gomera, in fact they are already very confused in the way of speaking Spanish in La Gomera. As in other whistled forms of tonal languages, the whistle functions to maintain approximately ordinary speech articulation, so that "variations of speech timbre appear as pitch variations" (Busnel and Class). The vowels are indicated with flat tones.

Interest for xenolinguistics

The Gomeran whistle has been considered of interest by Dr Laurance Doyle of the SETI Institute in the study of animal languages and hypothetical extraterrestrial languages, due to its ability to naturally encode language in a way that is different from ordinary human languages.

Cinematic works

• "With the hand in the water", with script and direction of Manuel Mora Morales, is a short film on the Silbo Gomero that tells a trip to the roots of the island in search of identity. See external links.
• "Guarapo (film)", directed by the Rios brothers, is a feature film set on the island of La Gomera during the Spanish post-war period. It relates the story of Benito (Luis Suárez), nicknamed Guarapo, a young man who dreams of emigrating to America for a better future. "Guarapo" is a film that faithfully shows life on the island at the time when the whistle had a strong presence in Gomera society being an indispensable tool for insular communication given the abrupt geography that modeles the island.
• "La Gomera (film)", is a Romanian film that narrates the journey of a policeman and mafia agent who travels to the island of La Gomera to learn the silbo gomero, in order to use the ancestral form of canaria to communicate with the mafia evading police surveillance and getting Zsolt out of jail, the only one who knows where 30 million euros are hidden.