Re: FYI re: Greenberg's Universals

> Date:         Wed, 4 Oct 2000 08:39:00 -0400
> From:         Yoon Ha Lee <yl112@...>
> As for drum codes...<sigh>  I wanted them to be gong codes at first, but
> then I realized I had no clue how well gong-sounds carried over distances
> as opposed to drum-codes.  (I've heard both, but neither in a
> message-sending situation).  I scoured the web with no success.  Someday
> I may actually figure out musical traditions and the actual drum-codes,
> though.
I've seen a description of a drum language once (on this list even, I
think). From what I remember, the people using it spoke a tonal
language, and they basically just drummed the melody of various
phrases.

Since there can be many phrases with the same pattern of tones, they
disambiguated by using a relatively small set of longwinded set
phrases. Warrior and river might have the same tones, but brave man
with spear and place of big flowing water probably don't.

And to make sure it was understood correctly at larger distances, they
repeated the whole message a lot of times.

Gongs: I don't know about those, but church bells seem to be audible
quite far away. I guess that anything loud that's unlike the sounds of
local nature will do.

Lars Mathiesen (U of Copenhagen CS Dep) <thorinn@...> (Humour NOT marked)