Whistling, an accepted or rejected
cultural feature?
GAAT U MEE NAAR DE ALOHA PARADE?
moessQn
When I was a small boy, my
elder brother used to go
about the house whistling,
only to be reprimanded by my
parents.
'mBok nyuwara wae!' my mot
her used to say, which phrase,
freely translated means: Just
use your voice!
My brother retorted: 'Lha iki
rak nyuwara, Bu!' (I am using
my voice all right, mother!)
But my mother remained ada
mant that whistling was
something taboo, something
to be avoided at any cost.
Once I read an article by Stephen Brown
titled: Whistling, a second language on
Canary Islands, in a newspaper. This
interesting publication described whist
ling as a means to communication
among the population of the Canary
Islands, West of Spain. This language
has developed from the sound system
produced by our lips and our breath.
People reportedly are able to convey
lengthy messages to each other, and if
necessary call each other names.
So we can say, the Morse codes are
actually nothing new. These are just
derivations of something very human.
My mother qualified her prohibition in
the following words: 'You should under
stand that whistling is a way of calling
up jinni ifrit (a kind of ghost) and
therefore is it very dangerous.
My father had another reason for ban
ning whistling. He said: 'The (colonial)
Dutch use it as a device to insult us,
Indonesians. On the one hand they
always mock us for not speaking their
language properly, but on the other
hand, if Indonesians happen to speak
Dutch fluently and correctly, they
don't like this either. So they express
their displeasure by whistling. There
fore I detest this habit.'
Much as I regretted my parents' deci
sion, I had to abide by it. But I noticed
that not all people in my environment
shared my parents' opinion. Many
people either did whistle or allowed
their children to do so. And to my
great surprise, my Dutch teacher intro
duced one or two songs during the
singing session at school, which were
partially whistled.
Even though no language ever developed
from whistling during my childhood,
more often than not many boys and
girls produced certain whistling melo
dies that passed on certain questions
and answers like e.g. (fiiiit, fiiiit) any
body home? To which the reply came
immediately: (fuut, fuut!) Yes, I am
here.
On another occasion, a girl called her
friend by whistling her friend's name
twice: more or less on the melody of
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this ditty sol mi sol, sol mi do (Taa-ti
Taa-til). All in all these little exchanges
of signals were quite fun, and we were
not thinking of any jinni ifrit or any
colonial Dutch at all.
In 1954 I went tot the United States
for study purposes. I was under the im
pression that I would be able to do a
lot of whistling in that country, because
I put the Westerners (Europeans and
Americans) on a par in this respect:
they all loved whistling, whether melo
diously or not.
So one morning while I was reviewing
a few linguistic articles, I whistled
snatches of Rimsky Korsalcov's Shehe-
rezade. Since it was a bright morning
and I happened to be in a happy mood
I emitted the melodies in a very loud
tone.
But who would have thought that my
little 'performance' would provoke such
a negative response? The door of the
little room where I was sitting, was
suddenly opened and the face of one of
my professors, a very distinguished
scholar, appeared.
The man complained: 'I had to walk
up and down the hall to find out who
was whistling. I would like to ask you
not to do it again. It bothers me.'
I was so stunned by my professor's
reaction that I forgot to apologize, and
I just grinned sheepishly. I certainly
had not suspected any American to get
upset by somebody whistling. So this
was the third manifestation of anno
yance besides those of my mother with
her jinni ifrit and my father with his
colonial Dutch. This time it was the
scholar's nerves that had apparently
been shocked. Eventually I found out
that this very prominent figure substi
tuted something else for whistling
namely hissing, melodious hissing to
be sure. This was quite a feat, anyway.
Now that I am looking back on the
past years I do not think, whistling
will ever develop into a language in
this country.
There is, however, a section of the
public at large that is sometimes heard
whistling: owners oiperkutut (song
birds). They do use their lips and breath
when they call their pets. These people,
at least show no aversion to this
human act
14
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