In Australia, the loud, shrill call of “cooee!” is often used over long distances in rural and mountainous areas to draw attention to oneself. What is it about this word that makes it more audible over distance and is there a word more suited to drawing attention to myself should I be lost in the outback?
Plenty of speculation on this one so we’re keeping the file open for a while. Thanks to those who point out that “Gooweet” was devised by Australian Aborigines for gaining long-distance attention, while a few hundred years back “hoooooha” was popular in Sri Lanka – Ed
• A person’s hearing is most sensitive between 1 kilohertz and 4 kilohertz, peaking at about 3 kilohertz. When someone hollers cooee, the highest part of the call is generally between 1 and 4 kilohertz. So it’s not that the call itself carries better, it’s just that we humans hear better at that pitch.
Advertisement
Nate Dog, By email, no address supplied
• The word cooee is more audible because it contains two open, long vowels. When pronounced, “coo” opens up your throat allowing it to resonate. When the subsequent “ee” is pronounced your throat closes slightly and the sound resonates loudly in your mouth and nasal cavity.
In contrast, when you say “help”, for example, this contains a very short vowel which only sounds in a narrowed throat.
So these “big” vowels allow you to send your voice out louder and larger. As for words that will draw attention to yourself… any swear word with “big” or “long” vowels will do.
Natalie Arad, By email, no address supplied
• The “c”, or any other explosive consonant, carries poorly and only helps to launch the subsequent vowel sounds. What you need to remember is that there are two very different vowel sounds which are at opposite extremes – one has almost no overtones, while the other is rich in them. Also, each vowel sound is sustained long enough not to be obscured by so-called multipath distortion, when different sounds reach the listener at the same time and thus confuse reception.
Similar considerations are apparent in the (under which letters are known as “Alpha”, “Bravo”, “Charlie”, and so on for the purpose of clarity), and related procedural words such as “Roger” and “Mayday”, which are chosen to be distinct even if you can only discern the vowel sounds. In fact evidence shows that people use similar sounds when choosing a name for a dog; two distinct vowel sounds are best when calling it from a distance.
Ron Davis, By email, no address supplied
• Australians may use this call to signal from afar, but Austrians yodel. In fact, “cooee” resembles “yodel(odel)ayitee” in that it contains broken, not continuous, sounds and also ends in “ee”.
Comparative trials seem to bear out the use of these sounds, even taking into consideration climatic factors such as mist, rain and snow, and terrain such as bare rock against vegetation.
P. G. Urben, Kenilworth, Warwickshire, UK
