Commit of katolaz's issue 2 submission, as received.

src/issue002/texts/katolaz_on-the-intriguing-beauty-of-whistled-languages.gmi

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+       On the intriguing beauty of whistled languages
+       ==============================================
+
+I have always found intriguing how humans have found literally thousands
+of different systems to communicate their thoughts. We call those
+systems "languages", and when we talk about them we probably think to
+the fact that each language uses a different word to denote the same
+object or concept. But there is one aspect that (almost!) all the
+languages on Earth have in common: they are "spoken", which means that
+they consists of combinations of sounds made by modulating the flow of
+air through the mouth, and by movements of our tongue and lips. This is
+how we get vowels and consonants: leave your mouth wide open and you get
+an "a", stretch your lips in a smile and you get an "e", blow into your
+closed mouth for half a second and then release the air by suddenly
+opening your lips, and you get a "p". And so on.
+
+But "speaking" is not the only possible manifestation of a human
+language. The strangest kind of languages I have bumped into are the
+so-called "whistled languages" [1], which are exactly what they say:
+languages consisting of combinations of tones that are whistled by the
+"speaker". You might be surprised to discover that there are literally
+hundreds of known whistled languages. One example is "Silbo Gomero" [2]
+(literally, "Gomeran whistle"), a whistled language used by the
+inhabitants of La Gomera in the Canary Islands. Most of the people in La
+Gomera can still speak the language today, thanks to a program to
+revitalise its usage, but all of the inhabitants understand it.
+Linguists believe that whistled languages are connected to the necessity
+to communicate over long distances and across impervious terrains, and
+in fact La Gomera is known for its deep valleys and canyons. And this
+same pattern seems to be shared by most of the whistled languages still
+in use today, from Asia to central America: the terrain of a region
+forced its inhabitants to whistle their thoughts, in order to be heard
+more easily and more efficiently.  
+
+Some recent studies have even shown that the speakers of "whistled"
+languages actually process whistles using the same regions of the brain
+that other humans use to process words in the usual "spoken" languages. 
+
+But why am I telling you about "whistled" languages? Well, because I
+recently started learning an artificial language that resembles a lot
+"whistled" languages. I am talking about Morse code [3]. Yes, the one
+used back in the days for telegraphy, where each letter of the alphabet
+consists of a short series of dot and dashes, or dits and dahs, and so
+on. It turns out Morse code is far from extinct, as it is currently in
+use by radio amateurs around the globe to communicate in the so-called
+"Continuous Wave" mode, normally abbreviated "CW" [4]. Basically, you
+send your message as a concatenation of long and short tones or pulses,
+which are then decoded by the person at the other end of the contact.
+
+If you ever try to learn Morse code (it is totally doable in a few
+weeks, or even less) you will be told that you must not think of each
+letter as consisting of a certain sequence of dots and dashes, but
+rather as a "sound", a new way to "pronounce" and "perceive" the same
+letter you are used to read and write [5]. The aim is to force your
+brain to think of "A" whenever you hear the sound "di-daa" and to think
+of "R" whenever you hear the sound "di-daah-dit", without having to
+double-translate the sound to dot-and-dashes and then back to the images
+of letters that our brain constructs and keeps.
+
+And how much is this different from teaching your brain that a certain
+whistle, with a certain tone, must be associated with "A", while another
+whistle, with another tone, shall be associated to "R"? 
+
+I really think learning CW is indeed not too different from learning a
+whistled language. You forget quite soon of dots and dashes, and only
+hear "the sound of T", and then start putting together individual sounds
+into words, to recognise "the sound of 'THE'".  Obviously, this process
+requires a certain amount of time and effort, but it is not much
+different from learning any other language. The words are still in
+English, or Spanish, but they are articulated in a totally different
+way.
+
+Coincidentally, CW (i.e., Morse code over radio) is often one of the few
+transmission modes that can successfully "get through" long distances or
+bad propagation conditions, when all the other voice modes cannot.
+Exactly as the whistling patterns of Silbo Gomero get through the
+valleys of La Gomera, while most of your shouting would not be
+intelligible at all. Obviously, there are several more efficient
+transmission modes available nowadays, mostly digital ones, which do not
+require much human intervention, if any at all. But I like to think that
+the deep reason why Morse code is still in wide use in ham radio is that
+hams like to "whistle" their thoughts, and find pleasure in putting some
+concrete effort to "copy" the whistled thoughts of their correspondents.
+Like the Gomerean have been doing for hundreds of years. 
+
+KatolaZ
+
+ -+-+-+-
+
+References:
+  [1] gopher://gopherpedia.com/0/Whistled language
+  [2] gopher://gopherpedia.com/0/Silbo Gomero
+  [3] gopher://gopherpedia.com/0/Morse code 
+  [4] gopher://gopherpedia.com/0/Continuous wave
+  [5] http://www.tasrt.ca/bookdown.html
+