(use of english: pt 2 open cloze) write your answers in the boxes
The night has not 0. fallen in La Gomera, one of the smallest Canary Islands.
I close my eyes to avoid 1. distracted by the landscape and 2. an effort to hear. I'm trying to make out, among the echo of the wind and the noise from the cars that 3. time to time drive along the road, the sounds of silbo gomero or Gomeran whistle; an ancient language the locals have assured me is still 4. use. read on
This method of communication, in 5. the Spanish language is replaced by two whistled vowels and four consonants, has the ability to travel up to two miles (3.2km), 6. further and with less effort than shouting. There are no certainties about its origins. It is known that when the first European settlers arrived at La Gomera in the 15th Century, the inhabitants of the island - of North African origin - communicated 7. whistles. Some locals recall its widespread use in the 1940s and 50s.
"In the old days, when the mountain 8. fire, something that happens quite frequently in the island, the Guardia Civil came to pick us up," says Lino Rodriguez, an old whistler with a cracked smoking voice.
"And 9. matter what we were doing, they put us in a truck and drove us to put out the fire. So, to avoid them, we passed a message between us whistling: 'You have to hide, the Guardia Civil is coming!'. And 10. they didn't whistle, they didn't understand what we were saying and couldn't find us."
The council and the mayors were paid to put out the fires but would not pay any locals who helped, he explains.
By the 1970s and 80s, there were only a few whistlers remaining, but at the end of the 90s there was renewed interest in silbo, in part 11. to an initiative to make it a compulsory subject at primary school.
For Fernando Mendez, minister of tourism of La Gomera, whistling is crucial to the island's tourism industry. Archaeologist Hernandez Marrero agrees that preservation is important, because it defines the identity of the Gomerans. But he fears that it risks becoming a cliche, 12. the flower necklaces given to tourists in Hawaii.
read the full text and hear some siblo gomera at BBC Mundo.
other vids: on the news siblo gomera tourism
whistling in the wind
