In Spanish, “Silbo
Gomero” means “Gomeran whistling.” It is a language “spoken” on La Gomera in
the Canary Islands and is made up entirely of whistling sounds.
The language was used by
the Guanches—the aboriginal people of the Canary Islands—long before Spanish
settlement. It is a whistled form of the original Guanche language, which died
out around the 17th century. Not much is known about that
spoken language of those people save for a few words recorded in the journals
of travellers and a few others that were integrated into the Spanish spoken on
the Canary Islands. It is believed that spoken Guanche had a simple phonetic
pattern that made it easily adaptable to whistling. The language was whistled
across the Canary Islands, popular on Gran Canaria, Tenerife, and El Hiero as
well as La Gomera.
