Say it in a whistle

located just off the northwest coast of mainland Africa the Canary Islands name derives from the Latin word for dogs not birds but in the hills of La Gomera the breeze carries the sound of the most exotic calls it's called El silbo from the Spanish SIL bar to whistle it's a complex language unique to this island and born centuries ago out of necessity and the reason is pretty simple La Gomera is made up of these deep volcanic ravines and in the days before phone service getting a message across could take days if you had to walk but if you whistle it only takes seconds for years there was no better way than this to warn of approaching pirates or do business with people in the next town oh hello Daria Darius is an expert SIL beador why not just yell for Casey Legree Domino you if you yelled you could reach about 500 meters on a good day but the message wouldn't be very clear a whistle can travel 3,000 meters and will arrive as clear as it left the Whistler he's right at this distance a shout would be garbled at best but our volunteer had no problem hearing the whistle clearly and neither did we in silbo words and phrases are formed by varying the pitch of the whistle oh yeah there is as you might guess a trick to learning the proper finger in mouth technique hey aah hey that's pretty close ok oh yes Willian kwibi joaquina valeriano Navarro is if you will the mother of all whistlers she's also good at names okay can you do Tracy Tracy Renee's tough flesh Tracy Tracy excellent but sometime in the last century as phones got better Silvo went from something everyone did to something only old folks did is sill vote mejor Oh even the seal bow master himself has a cell phone with a custom ringtone see the local government felt Silvo was in danger of fading away so they took action still though lessons are now required in all schools one of you the whistles mimic the sound of spoken Spanish listen to way knows des a side note here these girls were stronger whistlers than the boys much stronger in any case it seems to have caught on okay so one more question then whatever it would be more gay Silvo why why would it what is because it's our thing she says it belongs to us and today it sounds like el cielo we'll survive because the cellphone generation is learning to tweet

Channel: CBS

Views: 189,560

Keywords: cbsepisode, cbs, sunday, morning, island, canarie, whisle, language, say, ancient, communication, invention, remain

Id: OBfwHMJtM7M

Length: 3min 26sec (206 seconds)

Published: Sun May 20 2012