
Unusual whistled speech may reveal what humanity’s first words sounded like - Thevet
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20170525-the-people-who-speak-in-whistles
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YeGoblynQueenne
>> Herodotus described a group of cave-dwelling Ethiopians. “Their speech is
like no other in the world: it is like the squeaking of bats,” he wrote. We
can’t know for sure which communities he was describing, but Meyer says that
several whistled languages can still be heard in Ethiopia’s Omo Valley.

In Herodotus' writings, like in many other ancient sources, the name
"Aethiopian" (and not Ethiopian) was used for people from Sub-Saharan Africa:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aethiopia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aethiopia)

If people in Ethiopia have a whistled language it has probably nothing to do
with the "bat-like squeaks" mentioned in the article.

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Avshalom
Considering that the word barbarian comes to us from Greeks describing any
language that wasn't Greek as the like the baying of sheep I wouldn't take
"bat-like squeaks" too literally.

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jschwartzi
Herodotus was notable among the Greeks for trying to accurately record
history. I don't think we can safely assume that he embellished this story.

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YeGoblynQueenne
Maybe he didn't embellish his stories, but he certainly wrote down a lot of
things that were clearly folk tales and hearsay and of which he had no way to
check the veracity. You can't really make anything of his reporting of
"Aethiopian bat squeaks".

Oh and btw- he was not the only (ancient) Greek interested in a more rigorous
look at history. You have probably heard of Thucidides, Xenofon etc.

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cma
Being notable for something doesn't mean others can't be notable for it to.

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tdeck
The Pirahã language of South America can also be whistled or hummed, and has
other interesting characteristics , like lacking words for numbers:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirah%C3%A3_language](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirah%C3%A3_language)

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pacaro
Whistles can be a fun way to control a system, the DSP needed to do this is
really simple, and whistles really punch through the noise floor like nothing
else!

I've always used discrete change in pitch as the "symbol", so commands are
encoded as (for example) UP UP DOWN UP, so this only depends on the relative
pitch change between short whistles.

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BerislavLopac
Then there is Silbo Gomero:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PgEmSb0cKBg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PgEmSb0cKBg)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silbo_Gomero](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silbo_Gomero)

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mratzloff
Reminds me of Michael Rooker's character from Guardians of the Galaxy, with
his whistle-controlled arrow.

I'd love to hear an example of how this might work with English. It's hard to
imagine ex nihilo.

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Zuider
The article does give an example of how it works in Spanish. There is an audio
sample linked of the sentence 'En todo el mundo hay hombres que hablan
silbando' being whistled.

[https://soundcloud.com/bbc_com/entodoelmundo](https://soundcloud.com/bbc_com/entodoelmundo)

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Ericson2314
Reminds me I still need to learn how to wistle :(

