A very interesting National Geographic article about a whistled language got me thinking about texting. “Spanish consonants are mapped into four different whistles and the five vowels into two whistles”. This system is analogous to the multitap and predictive text methods used to input words into mobile phones. If we regard this as an adaption of our language it explains why some people have to spend ages searching for each individual letter while others can tap as fast as they can write. Yet if you ask this second group which number corresponds to the letter “n” (for example) very few would be able to tell you without having to work it out – they just subconciously know how they have to move their thumb to write a particular word.
This means that fluent texters would use the language part of their brain while writing. “Whistled languages, Meyer said, “are quite clearly defined and represent an original adaptation of the spoken language-like a local cellular phone-for the needs of isolated human groups.”
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