New Collection: the Sochiápam Chinantec Whistled Speech Collection of Mark Sicoli

AILLA is pleased to announce the completion of one of its new collections, the Sochiápam Chinantec Whistled Speech Collection of Mark Sicoli. This collection, which contains over three hours of audio and high-quality video detailing how the Chinantec speakers of Santiago Sochiápam in Mexico’s Oaxaca state can whistle their language to communicate across distances that would be difficult to traverse or yell across. In addition to recordings of people whistling in Chinantec and speaking in Spanish about whistling, the collection includes recordings of experimental trials of a single-blind map task to demonstrate the full communicative power of the whistled speech surrogate. Most of the recordings are accompanied by transcriptions and translations into Spanish and English, and the collection also includes two versions of the award-winning television documentary Whistles in the Mist.

Be sure to check out Mark Sicoli’s recent appearance on the With Good Reason podcast talking about this collection and his research on whistled speech.