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Concept
Whistled language
Summary
Whistled languages are linguistic systems that use whistling to emulate speech and facilitate communication between individuals.
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. Whistled languages are different in this respect from free associative whistling, which may be done to simulate music, to attract attention, or, in the case of herders or animal trainers, to transmit simple messages or instructions to animal companions. Generally, whistled languages emulate the tones or vowel formants of a natural spoken language, as well as aspects of its intonation and prosody, so that trained listeners who speak that language can understand the encoded message.
Whistled language is rare compared to spoken language, but it is found in cultures around the world. It is especially common in tone languages where the whistled tones transmit the tones of the syllables (tone melodies of the words). This might be because in tone languages the tone melody carries more of the functional load of communication while non-tonal phonology carries proportionally less. The genesis of a whistled language has never been recorded in either case and has not yet received much productive study.
Given the proportional use of whistled language in comparison to standard vocalized and non-verbal physical signaling systems such as sign language, historical research on whistled speech is similarly small.
In early China, the technique of transcendental whistling, or xiao, was a kind of nonverbal language with affinities to the spiritual aspects of Daoist meditation. The development of xiao as a practice and art form can be traced through the works of the Western Zhou dynasty, and it was initially used to convey a sense of grief, or to invoke the spirits of dearly departed loved ones.
Herodotus wrote in the Melpomene, the fourth book of his Histories, makes a passing reference to an Ethiopian tribe who "spoke like bats".
Official source
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