The whistled language in the Canary Islands is another of those mysteries that survive in this corner of the Atlantic even more inhabited by mysteries than by certainties. A form of communication that was probably practiced in all the islands although it survives with more vigor in the islands of La Gomera, El Hierro, Gran Canaria and Tenerife.
Originally, this language was a survival mechanism to save great distances, because the whistle is the strongest expression of the human voice, as a speaker of the tongue that you want to express, and was very useful in the capricious island orographies for which people and won always run, accepting what the volcanoes arranged in their day.
The conquerors already realized these unusual conversations among the first inhabitants of the islands: “… and then threw a whistle, as if it were a trumpet or a horn, and everyone else understood the call and gathered …”, Plasma Alonso de Palencia in the chronicles of the fourth decade.
It is not strange that this language existed and pervivates in Gran Canaria, you just have to observe a map of the island relief to understand that before the first phones, cars or roads arrived, “the whistle could save lives.”
This is at least expressed by María Jesús Rodríguez, who admits that it is an ununed hypothesis, but not unlikely since the whistle is configured as a survival language to carry messages where the voice does not arrive. She is a doctor in translation and interpretation from the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, and explains to this writing that the articulated whistle is unknown because “it was a very common practice in the rural areas, in the most abrupt areas of the areas The islands, and, in the case of the island of Gran Canaria, in the twentieth century, approximately in the middle of the century, it was when it already began to decline enough with the massive exodus of rural areas to urban areas, to the work of tomato and tourism. ”
Professor Rodríguez also points out the great change that was in the communications of the inhabitants of the islands the arrival of the first phones to those small stores that all the peoples had, or the first vehicles. “All that made the whistle no longer necessary to survive.”
Everything can be said whistling. “Do you want coffee?”, “Let’s go to the dance”, “Go up the goats”, “I am bad” or “May God bless you”, which is what Carmelo Pérez’s grandfather told him before he left the barracks and is also, probably, the most beautiful thing that a Canarian grandfather can tell his grandchildren.
This is what it tells about the documentary The whistled language on the island of Gran Canaria (2022)produced by Macaronesia. And there are informants and whistles who say that they knew their father for the whistle, as who recognizes a loved one for his tone of voice or his way of walking around the house.
María Jesús Rodríguez explains that, after losing the whistle that communicative function for survival, it remained a residual use between friends, couples, family and friends, who did knew and practiced articulated whistle, “but there was no longer so much generational transmission.”
In this way, its use declined to critical levels until almost its disappearance in the 80s of the last century. But, he survived.
The whistle in Gran Canaria
In Gran Canaria, the presence of more than 30 whistles or informants who claim that they knew from the practice of whistle by relatives has been witnessed. The areas where this language beats and for obvious geographical reasons are: the village of San Nicolás, the highs of southeast of Gran Canaria, and the central area of the island.
After understanding that articulated whistle is a kind of ‘speaker’ of any language; In the beginning of the Amazight who spoke the first settlers of the islands and later the Castilian, it could be asked if the whistle has an accent or if this language in Gran Canaria adopts its own characteristics.
For María Jesús Rodríguez, the difference would simply be in the same sense as in speech. “Sociolinguistic scholars consider that there is a Canarian speech, which is the one that characterizes the inhabitants of the islands, but then, there are certain features more typical of one island than from another. There are no big differences, but, for example, in the lexicon that is typical of an island, logically the whistle of another island is more difficult for it to use by phonetic features that are typical of an island and not so much of others. And some phonetic features that are typical of an island and not so much of others can also be noticed and, for example, the degree of aspiration of the final is. That can be detected in the whistle, yes, but it is difficult for communication or difficult to interrupt or hinder, ”says that it can be noted, yes, it is difficult to interrupt communication,” he says.
Rodríguez emphasizes that the use of whistled language is not exclusive to the Spanish. “For example, in southern France, Bearnés is whistled in the mountains; Also on a Greek island called Eubea, in a rural area of Türkiye or in Mexico. ”
In response to academic ethnographic studies such as Julian Mayer and David Díaz Reyes, they have moved to the field work of the Atlas of Morocco, from where according to the most accepted hypothesis come the settlements of the first Canarian population, and find that there they also whistle to communicate. They have collected numerous testimonies of the inhabitants of the area that whistle articulated language, and reinforces the hypothesis that he could reach the islands through those who at the time arrived here and that brought that practice to the Canary Islands.
In addition to being able to survive by throwing key messages at long distances, there are academic hypotheses that defend that the ancient canaries could use the whistle to communicate with each other in a kind of military code to defend their territory of the Castilian conquerors.
Whistles
The relationship of women with the whistle in Gran Canaria, is like the relationship of women everywhere in another time: they all understood this language, but do not speak as many as men, because they traditionally assume less grazing tasks. “The philologist Maximiano Trapero explains that, logically at that time the woman had a more limited job to what the house was, the Finch, maybe the cattle they had, and the man moved more, maybe, from one municipality to another, from one town to another, and needed it.” María Jesús Rodríguez explains that many women who were widows in the postwar period, and had to get ahead, whistled for the same purpose as men, “which is to communicate and get things.”
The legacy
For the doctor in translation the key to the survival of the whistle, even at a time when it seems no need, it is “spreading it and knowing it, because what is not known cannot be protected.” That is why he assumed the direction of Silbo Classroom of the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canariawhich aims not only to bring this patrimonial good closer to the university community, but to the whole society.
“The idea is also to protect the whistle of Gran Canaria as a good of cultural interest, which is a competence of the Canary Islands government. We support that political initiative that would help when the latest traditional whistles die, this is not lost and continues to support your learning, ”he says.
Currently other entities such as the Association I whistleperforms on the islands a strong dissemination work of this language, teaching the little ones the art of communicating with the sophistication that birds do and remembering that not understanding a language is no reason to ignore that it exists and survives.
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