GREAT NEWS – the UNESCO yesterday officially declared the nearly extinct whistled language Silbo Gomero from the Spanish Canary Islands as Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity!
This means, that our campaign to rescue this nearly extinct whistled language has been successfully accomplished!
Remember, in September 2008, as part of our committment for having been selected as official project of the UNESCO during the international year of languages, we launched a campaign to rescue this wonderful but nearly extinct whistled language.
We produced a great video (which you can view below) and developed a special part on our website where you can access an interactive learning unit (you have to be logged in for that) for learning Silbo Gomero. We even created a fan page in facebook with currently more than 800 fans of Silbo Gomero.
This campaign has raised huge attention in the international press (see more information on our press page) and we even won a Silver Lion in the International Marketing Festival in Cannes for this activity.
Obviously, the decision of the UNESCO to include Silbo Gomero in the cultural heritage list is based on many criteria but we are convinced that we helped this charming language to raise its attention within the international public to a much more significant level.
We at busuu.com will continuously add new languages to our system (we have recently launched a free, interactive course in Italian) and are definitely commited to further support “smaller” languages around the world to prevent them from their extinction.
