Whistling Canaries

One of the key characteristics of language is that it’s constantly evolving. A human invention, language adapts to the requirements of the people who speak it.

An interesting evolution has occurred in La Gomera, a small island off the coast of Morocco. In this Canary Island plagued with geographical difficulties, Spanish was for some time transformed into Silbo Gomero, a whistled version of the Castilian language. Silbo Gomero was developed as an efficient way of communication across the mountains. With out much effort, a person using Silbo can transmit a message across two or more miles.

Originally, Silbo consisted in whistling the vowels of the native African language used in the island. After the invasion of the Spaniards, the inhabitants of La Gomera simply adapted their Silbo to Spanish.

Silbo Gomero served

Landscape of La Gomera

two main purposes in the past, to communicate people over distances and to encrypt secrets from foreigners. With the widespread arrival of technology and the democratization of Spain, Silbo is no longer a necessity and its use has declined to the point of near-extinction. However, interest in Silbo is being renewed as the local authorities see it as a valuable cultural trait and have incentivized public schools of La Gomera to make Silbo a compulsory subject.

Personally, I have had contact with something similar to Silbo in the Colombian Montes de Maria, where every cowboy has his own scream that can be heard through the mountains. These powerful screams are particular to each individual and hearing them is quite something. Also, people from outside the region seem to be mechanically incapable of producing such peculiar sounds. Similar things are said about the Bushmen’s click language and about Silbo Gomero. Some people see potential economic or scientific applications for these types of quirky dialects. I just think they are cool.