Whistle While You Work

kukickface writes "Have you ever watched Star Wars and been amazed that Human beings could understand what R2D2 is saying? An ancient yet almost dead language called Silbo Gomero seems to be reality's closest equivalent. Could this type of language be used in the future to ease natural language processing pains?"

Comments

Imagine this other African language.....

[i_want_you_to_throw_]

as loud as that. The Ju/'hoansi language made famous by Nixau in the Gods Must Be Crazy. Could you imagine that kind of clicking radiating for two miles?

It's so nice that they are keeping it going. It was Stalin that said "Take away their language, take away their souls". Imagine the good that the Navajo talkers did in WW II. Would've been a shame if we didn't have them. The war would have been WAY tougher.

Re:Imagine this other African language.....

[corbettw]

"I'm all for the preservation of culture and language, but, c'mon -- the Navajos were valuable but it's not like they were a crucial part of the war effort, like radar."

Others disagree.

From Navajo Code Talkers: World War II Fact Sheet:

"Praise for their skill, speed and accuracy accrued throughout the war. At Iwo Jima, Major Howard Connor, 5th Marine Division signal officer, declared, "Were it not for the Navajos, the Marines would never have taken Iwo Jima." Connor had six Navajo code talkers working around the clock during the first two days of the battle. Those six sent and received over 800 messages, all without error." (emphasis added)

Considering how important Iwo Jima was to winning the war in the Pacific, I think it's safe to say that without the Navajo code talkers, the war would've dragged on much longer, with a questionable outcome.

I tried that Silbo Gomero on a co-worker

[Hairy_Potter]

you know, a friendly greeting that sounded like a wolf whistle when she walked by, and I got dismissed for sexual harassment. Thanks a lot.

Yeah, little Ewoks amazed me too

[whoda]

"Have you ever watched Star Wars and been amazed that Human beings could understand what R2D2 is saying?"

You do realize that Star Wars was a movie, not a documentary, don't you?

Whistling?

[macshune]

I for one, tweet, tweeeet, tweet, tweettweet, tweet tweet overlords!

So...

[Reteo Varala]

Would this be considered Pigeon Pidgin?

Dumbfounded by the Feebleness

[turgid]

Even as a small child when 8-bit micros had speech synthesizers, I wondered why, in the technologically advanced Star Wars society that damned robot couldn't speak in a human (or whatever) language. Look at C3PO. 3 million languages? They had space craft capable of superluminal travel, weapons the size of a moon, and a damned robot that sounded like a ZX Spectrum loading Manic Miner.

Re:Dumbfounded by the Feebleness

[GeLeTo]

His OS could not detect the sound card. So he had to resort to the good ol PC speaker.

Beneficial for Many

[mlmitton]

This was really interesting to me personally. I have a young nephew whose vocal chords don't work, and it doesn't look like he'll ever be able to talk normally. However, there's no reason to think that he won't be able to learn to whistle. He's still quite young, but he's already learned various clicks and pops that he can make with his mouth to get your attention. But if he could learn to whistle, and associate a vocabulary with that whistling, it would obviously help him communicate. I suppose there are quite a few mute people that could benefit from this. Who else could benefit?

People didn't understand R2.

[Lester67]

C3PO was his interpreter. In the X-Wing, Luke had to read what he was saying from a screen in the cockpit.

I feel all dirty and nerd-like for posting this. I hope you are happy.

Example

[CowboyRobot]

Here is an example of Silbo: http://www.agulo.net/silbo/silbo.mp3

I can't tell which are the 8 language elements as described in the article, but they seem to use at least duration and rising vs. falling pitch as 'letters'.

Tone Deafness

[merodach]

Imagine unintentionally cussing out your boss, or worse spouse, because you were tone deaf.....

Signing

[kid-noodle]

I'd suggest it would be more profitable for him to learn ASL, since that's a relatively widely used language - plus, he'll be able to communicate with deaf people.

Too Specified

[ammie]

I'm surprised that someone has brought it to light. The people who know silbo usually kept it to themselves, and were not fond of sharing the language with others.

La Gomera is the last of the Canary islands, one that has no access to the rest of the world save by ferry. The island is (not very well) known for a number of peculiar traits. The natives are not a fishing society despite living on an *island*, and they are known for a very very particular type of pottery they make there. (When asked if there were many who knew how to make pots in this fashion, a native answered "Oh yes, lots of us" and explained that at least 10 or 12 in the village knew the art.)

Barbara Kingsolver is an author who traveled to the island to escape the frenzy of the gulf war in the early 90's, and stumbled over the culture quite by accident. After some time there, she found that the language was designed to travel the great distances *that had nothing in between*. From one hilltop to another was fine, especially when there weren't many people in earshot, but in a building it would have no application, and we have a hard enough time hearing someone right next to us on the street. Imagine trying to listen to them around eighty others all whistling out to each other.

For great distances in hiking parties, or feild workers perhaps, but this has almost no application in a society that has already been *built* around the communication methods that we already have established.

Re:polically correct navajo

[CODiNE]

I know EXACTLY what you mean. I'm deaf and I get sick of all these hearing people who learn sign language WORDS and nothing at all of the grammar or culture that goes with being unable to hear.

So they sign straight english which is exactly like reading anything that's been through Babelfish. (I actually use Babelfish to show them how it looks for us) Worse is since sign languages are visual the only way you CAN describe someone is by their physical appearance, unless they always have a skateboard with them or something...

My name means tall, some of my friend's names are : black, mole, curly hair, big eyes, boy(he's older now but keeps it for sentimentality), long eyelashes(that's my girlfriend heh), blind(yup, he is), smile, laugh, frown, mustach and LOTS of asian people with signs connnected to their eyes.

These names don't offend the deaf at all, and can be changed easily if for some reason the person doesn't want it anymore. Perhaps they stop skateboarding, grow up, move to a new town, do something famous, or get a really bad reputation somehow.

So how do you explain someone who's name you can't recall? Well he's this tall, has glasses, he's black, he's bald, he limps... and he's sick a lot, RIGHT! That guy!

We have problems with P.C. hearing people telling us how rude we are... trying to change people's names they don't like, spreading new P.C. signs they've invented for other countries or nationalities. It's funny since the new signs STILL describe those people, now instead of K on the eyes for Korean it's rice-paddy hats. Instead of C on the eyes for Chinese, it's the old style communist coats. Instead of mimicing the stereotypical Russian leg kicking dance it's now wiping Vodka off the chin...

Why doncha guys go fix the english language first? Start calling Japan Nihon or Nippon, and Spain Espania... nobody has proven to me how open minded they are with all this P.C. crap... quite the opposite in fact.

-Don.