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I. Reading. Read the text Near-Extinct Language Returns.
Juan Cabello takes pride in not using a mobile phone or the internet to communicate. Instead, he whistles. Cabello is a silbador. He knows 'Silbo Gomero', a language that is whistled, not spoken, and can be heard more than two miles away. This unusual way of communicating is said to have arrived with early African settlers 2,500 years ago. Now, educators are working hard to save it from extinction by making schoolchildren study the language up to the age of fourteen.
Silbo features four 'vowels' and four 'consonants' that can be used to form more than 4,000 words. 'I use it for everything.' Cabello says. In fact, he makes a living from Silbo, performing daily exhibitions at a restaurant on this island of 220 square kilometres and 19,000 people.
People throughout La Gomera are known to have used Silbo in the past as a way of communicating over long distances.
A strong whistle saved farmers from trekking over the hills to give messages or news to neighbors. Then came the phone. In 1999, it was introduced as a compulsory subject in La Gomera's primary schools, in an effort to prevent the language from becoming extinct. Now 3,000 students are studying it, but only a few people are believed to be able to communicate fully in the whistling language. ‘Silbo is said to be the most important cultural heritage we have,' said Moises Plasencia, the director of the Canary Islands' government's historical heritage department.
It might seem appropriate for a language that sounds like birdsong to exist in the Canary Islands, but there is thought to be no connection between the islands' name and the birdsong-like way of communicating.
In fact, little is known about Silbo's origins. One study is looking for signs of Silbo in Venezuela, Cuba and Texas, all places to which Gomerans have emigrated in the past during hard economic times.
Now, Plasencia is heading an effort to get UNESCO to declare it a 'cultural heritage' and to support efforts to save it. Cabello also explains, 'It's good for just about anything except for romance: everyone on the island could hear what you're saying!