Re: Canary Islands Whistle Lang was Re: Robot langs

Eamon Graham wrote:


>"Davis, Iain E." wrote:
>>
>> Doesn't have to be _solely_ for machines.  Most of the R2 "speech"
>> appears to be whistles. I could see operating on that assumption, which
>> means someone who was (more than I!) adept with generating whistles
>> could potentially "speak" the language.  It'd be one of those "easier to
>> comprehend than to speak" kinds of things. :)
>
>Isn't there a whistle language that is or was used on the Canary
>Islands?
>
And Mixteco (Mexico/Guatemala), too.  IIRC the whistles follow the tone
contours, like the African drum-talking.  Kenneth Pike was famous for
demonstrating Mixtec in his more giddy moments.

To my layperson's ear, R2's "speech" most resembled the beeps you hear when
punching in telephone nos., though more of them, and more combinations I
think.
Probably easy to duplicate (e.g. the telephone hackers' "blue box").