The origins of the language are quite esoteric but many of the local people agree Silbo arrived on the island through the Guanches as they were the original settlers on the island pre-Hispanic colonisation. These people are considered descendants to the “Berber tribes that still populate the North African continent.”  

Upon reduced listening, the language bares much resemblance to many other whistling languages developed from different cultures such as “Mexico, Greece, Turkey, Papua New Guinea,” … Sonia Matos continues to cite Julien Meyer who has done extensive research in the field, stating the common denominator amongst the languages to be the mountainous geographical terrain. 

Unlike some of these other languages, La Gomera’s Silbo has become a protected cultural sonic heritage under UNESCO as of 2009 due to many of the locals who witnessed it’s major decline from the 1950s up until 1999 where it was made a compulsory part of school curriculum in order to preserve the unique vernacular form by passing it from the few remaining “silbadors” to their populations youth.

Beyond doubt, the language exists as an adaptation from the local dialect of Castilian Spanish as phonetically it aims to represent much of the way the people speak through whistling. …“for this reason it is frequently called a surrogate of the language spoken in the island.”