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A comment on On a small Greek island, practitioners of an ancient whistling language. Parent comment

Re:On a small Greek island, practitioners of an ancient whis... by INTPenis on Thursday February 08, 2018 @06:06AM (#16331424)
Good insight.

Maybe those old folks grew up together so they have their own whistling dialect.

The report on Swedish TV did show school children learning the whistling language so I'd assume they'd all understand eachother. But even so, I just don't think whistling leaves room for enough nuances to carry on a normal conversation.

It seems to be more suited for commands or exclamations like "bring me a beer" or "rain coming".

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Re:On a small Greek island, practitioners of an ancient whis... by vageli on Thursday February 08, 2018 @07:31AM (#16331695)
> But even so, I just don't think whistling leaves room for enough nuances to carry on a normal conversation.

> But even so, I just don't think rapidly moving air over skin to induce vibration leaves room for enough nuances to carry on a normal conversation.

Ultimately, whistling is just the emission of sound. Given that we get by with throat-sounds, I'd bet that whistling language could be sufficiently developed to be capable of expressing complex thought. Both speech and whistling are just moving air.

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