Re: whistle-talk (was: My new conlang)

Hi,

This is one of those weird situations where the lists I subscribe to
come together.

I play the didgeridoo. And I am on a didgeridoo list. The sound of a
didgeridoo playing is created by blowing air past your lips so that it
creates a raspberry type of sound. it is the same way one plays a
trumpet, if there are any trumpet players among us.

It is very hard to get more than three notes from a "didge". What didge
players usually do (and this has been handed down from aboriginals) is
called harmonics.

Harmonics are created by moving the toungue to various positions in the
mouth cavity while playing. ~~It is possible to mouth words while
playing the didgeridoo~~ The vocal cords are not used to do this. The
'sound' for the words comes from the 'lip buzzing'

I always regret not being able to describe the vowels and consonants
that didge players make while playing, because I know that all of those
sounds can be described very easily by the people on this list.  :)

This relates to whistle language because we talked about it on the didge
list. it is the same thing didge players are doing when they do
harmonics, they are forming the words with their mouth but they are
letting the sound come from the 'whistle' instead of their vocal cords.
The language of the Canary Island whistle language is Spanish.  :)

Try it using English or whatever language you prefer.

Of course it takes a little practise, and some sounds will be more
dificult due to the mouth shape involved in whistling. But you will see
that it can be done and, its really cool.




Anton Sherwood wrote:
>
> Christophe Grandsire :
> >> Aren't there a few languages (Amerindian, African?)
> >> that use whistles as phonemes or phones?
>
> Adam Walker wrote:
> > The closest I've been able to find is a couple of "codes" one used
> > for Spanish in the Canaries and one used by one of the Zapotec(???)
> > langs in Mexico which are whistled versions of the standard tongue
> > used for long distance communication.
>
> I wonder ...Anton Sherwood  --  http://www.ogre.nu/