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See the whistling island of La Gomera

<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">On the small island of La Gomera, one of the eight which form the Canary Islands, a once-threatened language is now enjoying a revival.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Silbo Gomero, the only whistled language in the world which still exists, has been a compulsory subject on the island since 1999 and an optional subject in the rest of the archipelago.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Now, almost all of the island’s 22,000 residents can understand it, and it has since been declared an Intangible Cultural Heritage by UNESCO.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">The language uses six condensed sounds - two representing the five spoken vowels in Spanish, and the other four representing 22 consonants which are lengthened or shortened to mimic Spanish words.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Since whistles can be heard further than shouts, Silbo Gomero was created to communicate over long distances because they can be heard for kilometres.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">There are several different whistling methods used on the island and experienced whistlers can often tell who is whistling by their “accent” alone.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">But, to save confusion most whistlers introduce themselves and call out the name of their intended recipient.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">The most traditional method is captured in </span><span style="font-weight: 400;">José Darías</span><span style="font-weight: 400;">’ </span><em><span style="font-weight: 400;">Whistling Tree</span></em><span style="font-weight: 400;"> sculpture at Mirador de Igualero, a viewpoint overlooking a ravine where the language was most frequently used.</span></p> <blockquote style="background: #FFF; border: 0; border-radius: 3px; box-shadow: 0 0 1px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.5),0 1px 10px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.15); margin: 1px; max-width: 540px; min-width: 326px; padding: 0; width: calc(100% - 2px);" class="instagram-media" data-instgrm-captioned="" data-instgrm-permalink="https://www.instagram.com/p/COkb6dNIhtR/?utm_source=ig_embed&amp;utm_campaign=loading" data-instgrm-version="13"> <div style="padding: 16px;"> <div style="display: flex; flex-direction: row; align-items: center;"> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 50%; flex-grow: 0; height: 40px; margin-right: 14px; width: 40px;"></div> <div style="display: flex; flex-direction: column; flex-grow: 1; justify-content: center;"> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; width: 100px;"></div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; width: 60px;"></div> </div> </div> <div style="padding: 19% 0;"></div> <div style="display: block; height: 50px; margin: 0 auto 12px; width: 50px;"></div> <div style="padding-top: 8px;"> <div style="color: #3897f0; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-weight: 550; line-height: 18px;">View this post on Instagram</div> </div> <p style="color: #c9c8cd; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 17px; margin-bottom: 0; margin-top: 8px; overflow: hidden; padding: 8px 0 7px; text-align: center; text-overflow: ellipsis; white-space: nowrap;"><a style="color: #c9c8cd; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 17px; text-decoration: none;" rel="noopener" href="https://www.instagram.com/p/COkb6dNIhtR/?utm_source=ig_embed&amp;utm_campaign=loading" target="_blank">A post shared by Turismo de La Gomera (@lagomeratravel)</a></p> </div> </blockquote> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Eugenio Darias, a 70-year-old retired Silbo Gomero teacher, pioneered the Silbo Gomero programme and remembers when many more of the inhabitants would use the language to communicate across the island’s deep ravines.</span></p> <p><iframe src="https://www.facebook.com/plugins/video.php?height=476&amp;href=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2Fdw.travel%2Fvideos%2F748836829170434%2F&amp;show_text=false&amp;width=476&amp;t=0" width="476" height="476" style="border: none; overflow: hidden;" scrolling="no" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="true" allow="autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; picture-in-picture; web-share"></iframe></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">“It was difficult terrain to work on - nobody wanted to climb up and down the ravines to pass on a message,” Darias explained. “Because of this, so many whistling conversations were happening at the same time, and we would have to wait our turn. It was like traffic!</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">“However - during the 1960s and ‘70s, most agricultural land was abandoned and many of the workers left the island,” he continued.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">“As Silbo Gomero was mostly used between local livestock holders, when they left the island, the whistling left with them too.”</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Additionally, modern technology and improved roads and paths on La Gomera took away the practicality and necessity of Silbo Gomero.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">But, Darias stepped in to ensure it would be used and understood by future generations.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">It can even be heard in areas where there is no phone service.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">“I know of two goat herders who still whistle to each other,” Darias said. “They are nephews who live on the south side of the island. Their livestock moves around in an area with no mobile network, and that’s why it’s necessary for them to use it.”</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">When asked if he would use Silbo Gomero if his phone ran out of battery, Darias made his stance clear.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">“Of course!” he said. “After all, we’d still communicate that way if phones didn’t exist.”</span></p> <p><em><span style="font-weight: 400;">Images: Hello Canary Islands, lagomeratravel / Instagram</span></em></p>

International Travel

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Chinese whistleblower claims she has proof COVID-19 came from Wuhan lab

<p>A Chinese virologist has made claims that COVID-19 was manufactured in a laboratory and did not come from “nature” like the Chinese government is claiming.</p> <p>Doctor Li-Meng Yan, a scientist who conducted some of the earliest research on COVID-19, joined the British talk show <em>Loose Women </em>to share her claims.</p> <p>She says that reports the virus came from a wet market are a “smokescreen”.</p> <p>“It comes from the lab, the lab in Wuhan and the lab is controlled by China’s government,” she said.</p> <p>She says her source are “local doctors”.</p> <p>“The first thing is the market in Wuhan ... is a smokescreen.</p> <p>“This virus is not from nature.”</p> <p>Yan earlier claimed she was told to keep a secret about the possibility of human-to-human transmission of COVID-19 back in December.</p> <p>She went on to say that former supervisors at the Hong Kong School of Public Health silenced her when she tried to sound the alarm.</p> <p>She fled Hong Kong for America in April.</p> <p>Dr Yan’s next plan is to release genomic sequencing that she says will trace the virus back to a lab.</p> <p>“The genome sequence is like a human fingerprint,” she said.</p> <p>“So based on this you can identify these things. I use the evidence … to tell people why this has come from the lab in China, why they are the only ones who made it.”</p> <p>China has repeatedly said that COVID-19 may not have originated in Asia at all.</p> <p>In July, the country pointed its finger at Spain, claiming that wastewater testing there found traces of the virus in March 2019.</p>

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Why you’re better at whistling than singing

<p>As far as mammals go, we humans are pretty good at using our voices. We sing, talk, lie — and imply — with the subtle dips and rises of our voices.</p> <p>We learn to use our voices by imitating the sounds that we hear, this is part of how infants learn to speak.</p> <p>Speaking even has a kind of sing-song element known as tone of voice that allows us to emphasize some words over others, ask questions or express emotions. So you might expect that humans should be expert singers.</p> <p>We are, so far as we know, the only ape that sings. But that also makes us the only ape to sing poorly.</p> <p>And it turns out, we’re better at whistling a tune than singing one.</p> <p><strong>Off key</strong></p> <p>Even opera singers, who are probably about as good at singing as humans can be, are sometimes off the mark.</p> <p>Unlike the voice, most instruments have a set of keys, holes or buttons that let it make a fixed set of sounds. If the instrument is well-tuned, all of those sounds will be notes in a musical scale.</p> <p>Other instruments like the violin or trombone make a continuous range of sounds, just like the voice. They can also sound off key, by making the same kind of mistakes as a singer does.</p> <p>Still, it turns out that <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong><a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/20445911.2015.1132024">instrumentalists play closer to their musical targets than singers</a></strong></span>. That is, singers are more likely to miss their note than violinists, for example.</p> <p>That’s a bleak outlook for <em>Homo vocal virtuoso,</em> but is this really a fair competition?</p> <p>Violins and trombones are built for the express purpose of making musical sounds. With an appropriately tuned instrument, placing a bow over the strings in a certain way ought to be pretty consistent in the sound that it makes.</p> <p>Should we really expect the same thing from the voice?</p> <p><strong>The human kazoo</strong></p> <p>The pitch of your voice comes from your larynx (sometimes called the voice box). It’s a collection of cartilage, muscle and membrane that sits in your throat, conveniently located between your lungs and mouth.</p> <p>When air passes between a pair of membranes in the larynx, they vibrate like a comb and wax-paper kazoo. Just like the kazoo, when these membranes are stretched, they make a higher pitch, and when they are relaxed, they make a lower pitch.</p> <p>Try holding your Adam’s apple and saying “zzzzz.” Did you feel something? To make the “sssss” sound you swing these membranes out of the way so they don’t vibrate any more. Try it, no more vibration, right?</p> <p>But the voice has a disadvantage. The larynx is controlled by a complicated and interconnected set of muscles. Whether one muscle raises or lowers the pitch of your voice can depend on what the other muscles are doing.</p> <p>Also, these are muscles! They get tired if you use them too much. They change as we grow, learn and age.</p> <p>Instruments, on the other hand, are professional tools that get regular tuning.</p> <p><strong>Lips versus larynx</strong></p> <p>To <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong><a href="http://rsos.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/5/4/171544">give singing a fair chance</a></strong></span>, we compared it to whistling instead of instruments.</p> <p>Just like singing, whistling makes a continuous range of pitches by passing air over a quivering mass of cells, except that when we whistle, we trade larynx for lips.</p> <p>In the lab, we had people listen to simple melodies then try to sing or whistle the melodies back. We compared the pitches of target notes with the pitches that people actually sang or whistled.</p> <p>Humans spend hours each day controlling the pitch of their voices — conveying love, sadness and anger. Despite all this practice, people were closer to the target note when they were whistling.</p> <p>Even in a fair contest, the voice didn’t measure up.</p> <p>Studies of <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong><a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/3143327.pdf?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">chimpanzee</a></strong></span>, <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong><a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10071-015-0889-6">gorilla</a></strong></span> and <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong><a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/srep30315">organgutan</a></strong></span> communication have showed that apes can do more with their voices than you might think, but they don’t come close to the skill and variety of the human voice.</p> <p>This tells us that the human skill with the voice evolved after our ancestors split from other apes. These studies also tell us that control over the lips evolved much earlier, and we think that this might explain our findings.</p> <p>Maybe evolution hasn’t had enough time to tune the larynx. It could also be that the larynx is tuned just well enough for speech and for many of us, singing just asks a little too much.</p> <p><strong>Whistled speech</strong></p> <p>If we have this long-since evolved skill with the lips, then why don’t we speak in whistles?</p> <p>The answer is that the voice carries a lot more information than just high and low pitches. We use the placement of our lips and tongue to amplify some parts of our voice and dampen others. This is how we build up the sounds that we use to speak.</p> <p>Whistles on the other hand are very simple sounds, and there is not much room for the rich acoustic tapestry of speech.</p> <p>However, some people have found a way to whistle their languages, such as in the mountains of the <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong><a href="https://www.hellocanaryislands.com/silbo-whistling-language-la-gomera/">Canary Islands</a></strong></span>, the <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong><a href="https://www.canal-u.tv/video/cerimes/documents_sur_une_langue_sifflee_pyreneenne.9134">French Pyrénées</a></strong></span>, <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong><a href="https://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/the-whistled-language-of-northern-turkey">Northern Turkey</a></strong></span> — and maybe even in <strong><a href="http://www.soundboard.com/sb/R2D2_R2_D2_sounds" target="_blank">a <span style="text-decoration: underline;">galaxy</span> far far away</a></strong>.</p> <p>Whistles may carry less information than the voice, but they will carry much further. That can be handy when your friends are out of earshot — or rather voice-shot.</p> <p><em>Written by Michel Belyk, Joseph F Johnson and Sonja A. Kotz. Republished with permission of <strong><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://www.theconversation.com" target="_blank">The Conversation.</a></span></strong></em><img width="1" height="1" src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/95346/count.gif?distributor=republish-lightbox-advanced" alt="The Conversation"/></p>

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Kiwi musical icon's whistle stop tour

<p>New Zealand musician Don McGlashan finds that writing about love is actually quite hard, but for his latest album he discovered some joy in tackling the subject matter. Palmerston North will be one of the last stops on McGlashan's national solo tour, and he said he has been enjoying playing at some classic kiwi venues.</p> <p>"This tour has been amazing, I'm getting to go to places that I have always wanted to go to but never quite got there.</p> <p>"The Barrytown Hall was this incredible old, old place that feels like a century ago people would have been stomping in there playing accordians and getting the locals to dance."</p> <p>Known for his ability to write songs that tell a story with iconic New Zealand bands such as The Mutton Birds, Blam Blam Blam and the Front Lawn, McGlashan has taken a new approach to his solo album Lucky Stars.</p> <p>"This album for me is one of the most immediate records I have made for a long time.</p> <p>"There are songs which sort of take place in one moment, they're not just stories, they are songs which deal with just one feeling and that sustains itself through the whole song.</p> <p>"Those are some of the hardest to write because I tend to structure songs like stories. I thought about the songs that I really love that are like that, about one uplifting moment, or a revelation, the simplicity of an idea."</p> <p>McGlashan said he is proud of Lucky Stars and acknowledges that he has been very fortunate to be able to have sustained a musical career for so long.</p> <p>"I arrived on the scene at a time when New Zealand music was just starting to get played on the radio, so all the way through the 80s it was just the beginning of there being a real interest in New Zealand music.</p> <p>"People use songs in all different ways and I'm still doing stuff and I feel that I have a heap more songs in me still to write. I still don't think I have done my best work.</p> <p>"The time I started and the luck I've had have led to a really great life of music and I wouldn't swap it for the world."</p> <p><em>Hero image credit: Facebook / Don McGlashan</em></p> <p>Written by Carly Thomas. First appeared on <a href="http://www.stuff.co.nz" target="_blank"><strong><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Stuff.co.nz</span></strong></a> </p> <p><strong>Related links:</strong></p> <p><a href="http://www.oversixty.co.nz/entertainment/technology/2015/10/iphone-photo-tips/"><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><em><strong>8 iPhone photo tips you’ll want to know about</strong></em></span></a></p> <p><a href="http://www.oversixty.co.nz/entertainment/technology/2015/10/social-media-health-benefits-study/"><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><em><strong>Social media good for older people’s health</strong></em></span></a></p> <p><a href="http://www.oversixty.co.nz/entertainment/technology/2015/10/people-failed-at-technology/"><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><em><strong>8 people who utterly failed at technology</strong></em></span></a></p>

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