To: soc.culture.laos
Even by the standards of southeast Asia, Laos is a linguistically
interesting place. As a former French colony, it remains part of la Francophonie, yet ironically, French is not its lingua franca; that
would be Lao, spoken natively by just over half the population (as
well, in another dialect, by many more Thais on the other side of the
western border). And that doesn't even get into the 90 other tongues
spoken in the various regions of Laos, many of which sound nothing like
the major languages in use. Venture far from Vientiane, up into the
country's northern highlands, and you'll even hear a language composed
entirely of whistles.

You'll hear it if you're lucky, anyway. As conveyed in Omi Zola Gupta
and Sparsh Ahuja's short documentary Birdsong, this language has
precious few remaining native speakers - or, in the case of one artisan
who communicates through a kind of traditional bamboo bagpipe called
the qeej, players. They hail from Long Lan, a village inhabited by the
Hmong people (who in the United States became known as an immigrant
group thanks to Clint Eastwood's film Gran Torino).

"Hmong people are romantics because we live in the mountains,
surrounded by the sounds of the birds and the rodents, the winds and
meadows of flowers," says one of them. "The insects and birds are still
singing in the forest," adds another, "but we don't hear them in the
city anymore. And without the birds, how can we tell the seasons?"

Like other whistled languages (including the Oaxacan, Turkish, and
Canarian ones we've previously featured here on Open Culture), that
used by the villagers of Long Lan does not belong to the urban world.
As Laura Spinney writes in the Guardian, some 80 such languages still
exist in total, "on every inhabited continent, usually where
traditional rural lifestyles persist, and in places where the terrain
makes long-distance communication both difficult and necessary - high mountains, for example, or dense forest." Though all of them are now endangered, "whistled languages have come into their own in surprising
ways in the past. They have often flourished when there has been a need
for secrecy," as when Papua New Guineans used theirs to evade Japanese surveillance in World War II - or, as one ofÿBirdsong's interviewees remembers, when he had things to say meant for his girlfriend's ears
alone.

via MessyNessy

Related content:

Speaking in Whistles: The Whistled Language of Oaxaca, Mexico

Discover the Disappearing Turkish Language That is Whistled, Not Spoken

The Fascinating Whistled Languages of the Canary Islands, Turkey &
Mexico (and What They Say About the Human Brain)

How Languages Evolve: Explained in a Winning TED-Ed Animation

The Rarest Sounds Across All Human Languages: Learn What They Are, and
How to Say Them

Based in Seoul,ÿColin Marshallÿwrites and broadcasts on cities,
language, and culture. His projects include the Substack
newsletterÿBooks on Cities,ÿthe bookÿThe Stateless City: a Walk through 21st-Century Los Angelesÿand the video seriesÿThe City in Cinema.
Follow him on Twitter atÿ@colinmarshallÿor onÿFacebook.

https://www.openculture.com/2024/01/hear-the-dying-whistled-language-of-laos-featured-in-a-new-short-film-birdsong.html
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