El Silbo Gomero - the whistling language of the Canaries

The language, communicating by whistles, dates from the 15th century

The EU Commissioner for Multilingualism, Leonard Orban, has promised to seek funding to safeguard el silbo gomero as a language of the European Union. The Commissioner visited La Gomera this June, and described el silbo as something unique on the planet, a world legacy which, as part of the EU’s heritage, must be preserved.

Seen by the Commissioner as much more than just a вЂ˜mere’ system of communication, el silbo was already in use by the island’s inhabitants when the first Spanish conquistadores arrived there in the 15th Century. It’s a whistled form of communication which uses just a few vowels and consonants and relies on tones to reproduce the speech patterns of a spoken language. It’s capable of reproducing any spoken language, but the speech patterns used today on La Gomera are, of course, Spanish. In fact, findings published in the science journal, Nature, in 2005, showed the вЂ˜silbadores’ use a part of the brain which is normally associated with spoken language.

It developed as a way of communicating across large distances and, when weather conditions are right, can be heard as far away as 3 kilometres, with messages being passed on from one end of the island to the other, from the bottom of the deep ravines up to the high peaks and across the next narrow valley.

It’s even been used as a secret language on occasion, most recently during the Spanish Civil War.

El silbo was once used on other islands of the Canaries, particularly on El Hierro, but there are very few people still living there now who remember it. Researcher David DГ­az Reyes presented a two-year study on the whistled language of El Hierro in November last year and spoke of only ten or so people who were still able to whistle the language with any clarity. It was previously thought to have died out at the beginning of the 20th Century.

On La Gomera, the social changes of the second half of the last century led the silbo close to the edge of extinction, but legislation was passed in 1999 to make the language compulsory teaching at primary and secondary schools. It’s now being learnt and used by new generations of silbadores and is also protected both as ethnic heritage and as part of the Canary Islands’ cultural heritage.

And in September 2008, El Silbo Gomero was officially chosen as one of three Spanish candidates for Unesco recognition as an Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.