Mehrsprachigkeit in Europa: Plurilinguismo in Europa ... - EURAC

Bettina Gartner, Oliver Streiter
at La Gomera where it was used very frequently since the 1960 th . Then the whistled language
declined. In 1999 (when the last French whistler at Aas died) the local government of La Gomera
decided to establish whistling of El Silbo as a school subject for children until the age of 14.
Since then it has been taught 25 minutes a week in all schools of La Gomera (see Trujillo
2005).
El Silbo is the only whistled language to have its own phonetic transcription. The whistled
vocabulary is thought to have approximately 400 words. Linguists are still arguing on how
many vowels and consonants there are in El Silbo. Busnel (1976) and Meyer (2005) talk
about 5 vowels and nearly all consonants. Tujillo (1978) insists on 2 vowels (one for “i” and
“e”; another for “a”, “o”, and “u”) and only 4 consonants (“ch” for t, ch, s; “k” for p and k;
“y” for d, n, ñ, l, ll, y, r, rr, λ; “g” for b, f, m, g , j (h)). And Isidro Ortiz (in: Trujillo 2006),
a teacher of El Silbo, names 4 vowels (a, e, i o, u = o) und 4 consonants („che“ for t, ch, s;
“ye” for d, n, ñ, l, ll, y, r, rr; “ge” for b, m, g, j and “ke” for p, k, f).
• The whistled language of Antia (Greece)
The Greek village of Antia lies in the province of Karystia situated in the south-east of the Island
Evia (Euboea). The whistled language which is used there was fi rst described by Xiromeritis
and Spyridis in 1991. At that time Antia had around 100 inhabitants, the most of them were
shepherds. Surprisingly, the people living in the neighbourhood of Antia seem neither to use nor
to understand the whistled language.
As at La Gomera the whistled language of Antia is used to communicate with humans as well
as to command animals such as dogs and cattle. Obviously, whistled orders for animals have
only a limited semantic value and do not have any pendant in the spoken language.
Whistling in Antia is very vital and used not only for long-distance communication. “Whistlers
in Antia converse with each other over short distances too, even when they are in the same
room. When someone is approaching, the whistlers can convert their whistled speech into
normal talk or they can continue whistling”, writes Charalambakis (3).
Children learn the whistled language by doing at the age of 8 or 9.
The origins of the whistled language of Antia are nebulous. According to a legend, it already
existed in the 5th century B.C. (Charalambakis 1994: 391).
• The whistled language of Kuşköy (Turkey)
The situation in Kuşköy seems to be totally different from that of Antia. Instead of existing since
thousands of years it is thought to have developed only during the past 100 years. “The oldest
inhabitants who in 1964 were between 75 and 80 years of age, asserted that in their youth it
did no exist in its present form, that around 1900-1910 it was used exclusively for controlling
animals, and that the present-day whistled language grew out of that. In view of the diffi culties
that beset that kind of enquiry, we cannot unreservedly either endorse or reject this account,
which was given only incidentally”, write Busnel and Classe (4).
Elsewise than at Antia the whistled language of Kuşköy is not only used in one single village
but in the whole region, which covers around 30 villages and 5000 square kilometres. Kuşköy
– which means “village of the birds” – lies in the north-east of Turkey, near the coast of the
Black Sea.
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