00:00Your boat docks at one of the smallest of the Canary Islands, off the northwestern coast
00:04of Africa.
00:06Some peace and quiet, finally.
00:08This place isn't as touristy as some other islands you've been to.
00:12Its main sights are a house where Christopher Columbus stayed on his first transatlantic
00:16voyage in numerous hills.
00:18You can hear the sounds of the waves and the birds and… wait, was that someone whistling
00:23in the distance?
00:24The whistle is soon answered by another one in a different tone.
00:28The guide explains it's not just some teenagers playing around.
00:31The guys are actually busy preserving one of the most unusual languages in the world.
00:37It's Silbo Gomero, and it's only spoken on La Gomera Island.
00:41And no, the locals aren't all opera singers or musicians.
00:45This beautiful way of communication was born out of necessity.
00:49As you see, the terrain here on La Gomera is basically going from hilltop to hilltop,
00:54with deep ravines in between.
00:56So imagine you have an important message to deliver to someone living on the other
01:00side of the ravine.
01:01You'd have to climb up and down and up and down.
01:04I'm getting a bit tired.
01:06Shouting whole sentences in some regular language won't take you far, unless you have some
01:11special equipment.
01:12Plus, it would be quite disturbing.
01:14So why don't we try to whistle the message and send it across several miles this way?
01:20That was probably the thinking that the locals had when they decided to announce important
01:24events, request livestock, and warn of approaching danger using a drifting, piercing sound.
01:31The language has existed for several centuries, although no one knows exactly who invented
01:36it or when.
01:37We can only be sure that the first European settlers set foot on this land in the 15th
01:42century, and Silbo Gomero was already a thing back then.
01:46The local population of North Africans originally used whistles to communicate.
01:52And it wasn't just some musical gibberish.
01:54The whistles reproduced their language consisting of words.
01:57The Spanish then adapted the whistling language to their own.
02:01So the Silbo Gomero you can master now uses six kinds of sounds.
02:06Two of the whistles stand for the five spoken vowels in Spanish, and the remaining replace
02:11the 22 consonants.
02:13All the whistlers have to do is to make sounds longer or shorter to mimic the real words.
02:18The language has over 4,000 of them.
02:22Most proficient speakers, or rather, whistlers, use different methods to make sounds and can
02:27recognize others by the accent of their whistle.
02:30But to make it more clear, most whistlers first introduce themselves and name the recipient
02:35of the message.
02:36When the recipient understands the message, they respond with a whistle, which means bueno
02:41bueno.
02:43In the 1950s, Silbo Gomero was so popular on the island that whistlers had to wait in
02:48line to deliver their messages.
02:50They were mostly farmers who needed to share instructions with others.
02:54In the following decades, most of the agricultural lands were abandoned, and many of the workers
02:59left, so whistling across the valleys was becoming less and less common.
03:04In the 1990s, with all the new forms of communication spreading and new roads being built on the
03:09island, the local authorities got really concerned about the future of their unique language.
03:15They added it to the elementary school program.
03:18In 2009, UNESCO officially acknowledged the language as a cultural heritage.
03:23So, if you're good at whistling, you could tell everybody back home you've mastered
03:28a new language while traveling.
03:29Hopefully, there won't be any real Silbo Gomero speakers nearby.
03:34Don't feel like whistling?
03:35Well, then, you might appreciate the language of the Parajas, who hide deep in the Amazon
03:41rainforest in Brazil.
03:43These guys literally live in the present.
03:45They don't create myths.
03:47Only what they see right here, right now is real.
03:50It's also why they don't make up complicated sentences in different tenses.
03:54They only describe what they know and see.
03:57The good news is that there are just 8 consonants and 3 vowels.
04:00The bad news is it's based on tones and stresses a lot.
04:04There are no words for numbers.
04:06There is a small amount and a larger amount.
04:09All, each, every, most, and few don't exist either.
04:14If you're still into learning their language, don't expect a lesson on colors.
04:18There are just no words for them.
04:20A red cop is not red, it's the color of a berry everyone in the tribe knows.
04:25The Parajas like to mean business, so there's no room for fluff in their language.
04:30Instead of saying thank you, they give each other gifts or do something nice.
04:34They also use suffixes that replace whole phrases.
04:38For example, instead of saying, I know my neighbor has picked up the flower because
04:42I saw her do it, they'd use just one suffix, meaning that you're certain because you saw
04:47it with your own eyes.
04:49They like to ask direct questions like, where is the hut, and answer them without any special
04:54words.
04:55It's by the river.
04:57Sound way too complicated?
04:59How about a language that has the smallest alphabet ever, with only 12 letters and 11
05:04sounds?
05:05Around 4,300 people who live on an island to the east of New Guinea have the pleasure
05:10of using Rhotokis as their language.
05:13Except for a rather limited alphabet, Rhotokis has a rather regular word order.
05:18Adjectives and pronouns come before the nouns they modify.
05:237 million people in South Africa use Kausa language to communicate.
05:27It's a language based on three types of clicks, and the only way to feel the difference between
05:32words is by using a system of tones.
05:35If you want to master this language, plan to stay here a while.
05:40Aymara can hardly be called a rare language because it has around 2 million speakers and
05:45is one of the official languages of Bolivia and Peru.
05:49But it definitely deserves a shout-out as a super original language because of its tense
05:54system.
05:55The feature is seen as something that lies behind you and not in front of you like we're
05:59used to.
06:00It's because it's something we don't know anything about and we can't see it, so it's
06:05behind us.
06:06I know, I don't get it either.
06:08But anyway, another cool thing, nouns don't have gender.
06:12And you gotta thank Aymara for the word alpaca.
06:16Aww.
06:17Tujuca language is way less spread, with only around 1,000 speakers living in Brazil and
06:23Colombia.
06:24Tujuca has over 100 genders for words.
06:27And it's one of those languages that pile up morphemes to build super long words that
06:31replace entire sentences.
06:34Here's what the phrase, I do not know how to write, would look like in Tujuca.
06:39Don't even ask.
06:40I won't read it for you.
06:41It's above my pay grade.
06:44I need an Advil.
06:45My head is starting to ache from all that linguistic diversity.
06:48Why don't we just invent one simple language that all people around the world could study
06:54and never need to use a translator again?
06:57When I get a Nobel Prize for my idea, I will… oh, wait.
07:01Of course, someone already had that idea.
07:04A Polish ophthalmologist created Esperanto back in 1887.
07:09It is the most successful artificial language so far, with over 100,000 speakers.
07:15If you have experience with any European languages, mostly French, Italian, Spanish, Romanian,
07:21English, German, and, of course, the language creator's native Polish, you should have
07:26no trouble understanding Esperanto.
07:29It derived roots from these languages and uses a really simple rule.
07:33You spell the words the way you pronounce them.
07:36You'll easily recognize different parts of speech by their endings.
07:39Nouns, for example, have no gender and end in O. Verbs only have one form for each tense
07:46or mood.
07:47I go, they go, he or she goes.
07:49There will be one verb form for all of them.
07:52There's a whole bunch of suffixes that you can add to word roots to change the meaning.
07:56And here comes my personal favorite.
07:59There are 16 rules, and not a single exception.
08:03That there might've helped my language grade back in high school.
08:07That's it for today!
08:10So hey, if you pacified your curiosity, then give the video a like and share it with your
08:15friends!
08:16Or if you want more, just click on these videos and stay on the Bright Side!
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