Subject: summary : double - dutch and youthese / pig latin

my original query was posted on jul 12 1997 in linguist ( re : 8 . 1048 ) and asked for data on : ( a ) secret signalization codes among children approaching ( but still not having fully reached ) the age of adolescence , particularly so-called " double - dutch " ( a more or less invariant standard syllable is inserted into every word to render it unrecognizable ) in various languages of the world ; ( b ) exclusivist , but not particularly secretive youth-specific slang , so-called " youthese " , among teenagers ( adolescents ) , functioning as peer , in-group , or clique trademark . i have received a great deal of very useful information . i have not attempted making a summary earlier , because new responses kept coming in ( i suppose , i chose an inopportune time to send in my query , when most people are on vacation / holidays ) . having now also recieved the material one respondent said she would send me after returning from a journey , i can now proceed with the summary : the responses also included new leads to further search , and the following is a total summary . i first of all want to thank all the responders and contributors for their bery helpful and informative messages : jannis k . androutsopoulos < androuts @ novell1 . gs . uni-heidelberg . de > jack aubert < jaubert @ cpcug . org > rick mc callister < rmccalli @ muw . edu > bill fisher < william . fisher @ nist . gov > tim jake gluckman < tjgluckman @ aol . com > jack hall < jhall @ uh . edu > marion kee < marion _ kee @ cs . cmu . edu > nobuko koyama - murakami < koyamamu @ hawaii . edu > nathan sanders < sanders @ ling . ucsc . edu > nik taylor < jnataylor @ pcola . gulf . net > markell r west < markell @ afterlife . ncsc . mil > mark a . wilson < maw @ annap . infi . net > sorry if i missed somebody ( 1 ) first , the direct respondents to my original query : - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - rick mc callister : called my attention to the fact , the pig latin was the term more commonly used for what i called " double dutch " , and also gave me the url of his www spanish pig latin page : http : / / www . muw . edu / ~ rmccalli / spigpayatinlay . html the www page is very informative . it also suggested a new venue of search , which proved quite fruitful , i . e . i started to search the internet for mentionings of " pig latin " , see ( 2 ) below . - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - bill fisher : one good example of this , which you may already be aware of , is " boontling " , a jargon that was developed in the 19th century in marin county , california . i ' ve got a pretty decent book on it , " boontling , an american lingo " , by charles c . adams , u . of texas press , austin , 1971 , isbn 0-292 - 70082 - 2 . - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - tim gluckman : when i was at school in the ' 60s - in stockport , england - i recall that oneschoolgirl clique in my year spoke one of these insider languages . one day i asked one - they were all in my schoolyear - of the more ansprechbar of these recently pubertied schulmaedchen what they were saying . as far as i can recall it , her explanation was that their geheimsprache included a variable substitution of t / d - perhaps other consonants too - before the end of the word . it certainly had the affect of of rendering their conversations incomprehensible . this is the only time i ever came across it ; c . 1964 / 5 . they spoke it for 6 months as far as i can recall . whether it went on beyond that i do n't know ; these girls were in the middle of three streams at the grammar school 15 kilometres south of manchester where i went to at that time . and on a question of mine indicated , they were at an age where they were actively dating with boys . - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - marion kee : there was a discussion on linguist ( i think sometime in 1995 ) about pig latin and related topics ; i think there were examples cited from a number of different languages . the discussion might have included a list of references . to find it in the linguist archive , try searching on " pig latin " and / or " egg latin " ( in egg latin , every syllable gets the syllable " egg " added prior to its vowel ; e . g . , " eggegg leggateggin " - - " egg latin " . english only , as far as i know , and my ex-husband learned it when he was 10 or 11 , in athens , ohio , usa . ) this suggestion too opened a fruitful venue for further search , see ( 3 ) below . - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - nik taylor : my cousins , my brother , and i had a code called flip-top . you started out by flipping around pairs of letters , double letters being counted as one , and adding - ot to consonants and nothing to vowels , doubles being indicated by " squared " , so " hello " - " e hot o lot-squared " . she and her friend had invented it as " tot " ( i think that was its name ) , and it was just adding - ot to consonants and the " squared " part , so " hello " - " hote lot-squared o " , i added the flipping part . ( 2 ) rick mc callister 's www page suggested a search for other such pages , but i only found one , that of nathan sanders : http : / / ling . ucsc . edu / ~ sanders / research . html which also was very informative on language games , referred to as _ ludlings _ , but i wrote the owner and got further information : - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - nathan sanders : a good place to start would be the work of bruce bagemihl , who has done a lot of work in the area of ludlings / language-games . here are two references on ludlings . the first has a large list of examples , while the second has more explanation of the ludling phenomenon itself : bagemihl , bruce . 1989 . ` ` the crossing constraint and backwards languages . ' ' _ natural language and linguistic theory _ . vol . 7 . pp . 481-549 . bagemihl , bruce . 1996 . ` ` language games and related areas . ' ' in john a . goldsmith ed . _ the handbook of phonological theory _ . cambridge : blackwell publishers . pp . 697-712 . = 3d = 3d = 3d = 3d = 3d = 3d = 3d = 3d = 3d = 3d = 3d = 3d = 3d = 3d = 3d = 3d = 3d = 3d = 3d ( 3 ) marion kee 's suggestion to search the linguist archive led me to two unsummarized queries , so i mailed the querists : - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - jannis androutsopoulos : snailed-mailed me copious material on a colloquiium she organized in heidelberg , dedicated to questions of youth slang : international colloquium " linguistic and sociolinguistic aspects of youth - specific language " , heidelberg , june 5 - 7 , 1997 , hosted by the graduiertenkolleg " dynamics of non - standard varieties " , univ . of heidelberg & univ . of mannheim . it is obviously impossible to summarize the great amount of data in the space available here , so i ' ll just say that it covers various aspects of youth slang in germany ( also ex - gdr specific ) , italy , france , switzerland ( also at turn of 19th to 20th century ) , swedish . some of the papers touch = ed upon influence of rap / hip - hop etc . on youth slang . - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - markell west : responded first of all by posting a summary of responses to his query , which in itself was very informative ( re : 8 . 1079 ) . apart from that it contained a list of respondents : * * * * * ( 4 ) i mailed the respondents directly , and this brought me further helpful responses : - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - jack aubert : the french " verlan " reverses the order of syllables . " e l ' envers " means " backwards " and if you pronounce l ' envers with its syllables reversed you get " verlan . " this is definitely an example of what you described as type b - - adolescent exclusivist . i have heard it said that verlan originally was used by thieves and pickpockets , but suspect this is just a made-up explanation with no particular basis in fact . but whatever its origins , it is now used by adolescents as an exclusivist slang . i do n't think any body actually uses verlan for full sentences or extended conversations . it mostly forms the basis for individual slang words that go into normal sentances . you could refer to your zon-mai ( maison ) or zon-blou ( blou son ) . there was a movie a few years ago called " les ripoux " which is verlan for " les pourris " which in context referred to corrupt cops . i think the term for french - born arabs , " beurs " was formed using some version of verlan which is not always regular . - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - jack hall : in my response to the query about pig latin , i mentioned what i called the " op " language , which i read about in a book or magazine when i was about 10-12 years old ( mid 1950 's ) . as i recall , the simple rule was : put " op " ( phonetically [ a : p ] after every consonant in a word except the last ( final ) consonant . i am not certain what the rule was about consonant clusters . thus " dog " would be " dopog " . i remember specifically that the word " umbrella " was given as : " umopbopropellopa " , indicating that " op " is to be placed after all three consonants at the beginning ( umbr - - ) , but only one after the double " l " . i have never met anybody who has heard of this language , or knew how to use it , and , since i learned about it from a book , rather than from other people ( children ) , i cannot say anything about the sociolinguistics of it . for me it is an idiolect ( ! ! ) we ' re talking at least 40 years here , but the strange thing is , i can actually visualize the item that i read , and the page on which it was printed , although i certainly do n't know the title of the book . i am sure that it was written for people my ( our ) age at the time , not for adults . i remember that , even while i was reading it , and although i was only about 10 years old , i was aware that the description of the " language " was not sufficiently detailed in treatment of matters such as consonant clusters or sequences . i ' m pretty sure that " st " would be treated as a cluster , with one " op " inserted after it , not an " op " after the " s " and another " op " inserted after the " t " . thus " stay " would be " stopay " , not " soptopay " , but i remember that at the time i was aware that i was not sure how such a word would be treated . - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - nobuko koyama - murakami : japanese ba-bi - bu-be - bo language ( or lingo ) was used by teenagers . ba - bi-bu - be-bo language was specifically used when they . . . . . . . were teasing or joking with others , wishing to make their conversation sound so secretive , and purposely annoying others . manipulating this language so skillfully was a key to the membership of this group . if you mimicked this language poorly , you would be automatically excluded from the group . one more thing : there were some variants in use of this language . differences seemed to be strongly related with types of dialects ( of japanese ) they spoke . in the northern part of the mainland japan , ba-bi - bu-be - bo was inserted accordingly based on phonetics . in the tokyo metropolitan areas , ba-bi - bu-be - bo was inserted between orthographic letters ( at least such was a tendency that i had found ) . e . g . , " icecream " ( written as a-i - su-ku - ri - : - mu ) nb " : " represents lengthening mark in japanese orthography here . 1 ) a-ba - i-bi - su-bu - ku-bu - ri-bi - i-bi - mu-bu ( tokyo ) 2 ) a-ba - i-bi - su-bu - ku-bu - ri-bi - i-mu - bu as far as i know , the age group that i mentioned ( those were teenagers in 80 's ) were in the rage of 15-18 ( which means that they were in high school at that time period : nb in japan , unlike u . s . , high school is legally and clearly a separate institute ) . we all encountered and experienced this ba-bi - bu-be - bo language when we were high school students . - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - mark wilson : it 's been several years since i observed the phenomenon i told markel about ( the german insertion of " lav " after vowels ) . german : " lav " inserted after vowels . " ilavich wohlavonelave ilavin balavad holavombulavurg " for " ich wohne in bad homburg " to be more precise , the insertion was " lavv " , where v stands for the vowel immediately preceding the ( inserted ) " l " . = 3d = 3d = 3d = 3d = 3d = 3d = 3d = 3d = 3d = 3d = 3d = 3d = 3d = 3d = 3d = 3d = 3d = 3d = 3d = 3d = 3 some tentative conclusions : ( a ) both phenomena , pig latin - type phonologically manipulated secret language , and youth slang , are apparently neither an anglosaxon , nor a european particularity . ( b ) predeliction to pig latin - type language game covers a much wider age bracket than i had initially suspected , beginning at around 10 years , and overlapping with youth slang , in which pig latin - type expressions may be taken up as slang - specific words . thanks again to everybody who contributed . perhaps i should apologize that this summary got so long , but to be honest , of course , i am very happy to have gotten so much to summarize , and thought it would be selfish not to share it with fellow linguist - listers and future searchers of the linguist archives . for this same reason , here are my own experiences with pig latin : at age 12-13 years , in indonesian junior middle school ( smp ) in bogor , west java , i encountered ( took part ) in the following form of pig latin : sentences were constructed to preferentially consist of bisyllabic words ( most basic words in indonesian are bisyllabic ) , and when the first syllable ended in a consonant , the entire second syllable was replaced by _ se _ ( _ e _ as in english " were " ) , otherwise the initial consonant of the second syllable was retained and only the rest replaced : _ saya cinta sama kamu _ " i love you " ( _ c _ as engl . _ ch _ ) became : _ sayse cinse samse kamse _ from other people i know that similar indonesian pig latins had existed in other parts of indonesia , particularly in central and east java . most of the ones i heard of had the _ se _ insertion , but the rules were not always exactly like in bogor in my childhood . it was only used occasionally , particularly to tease those who were not " in " to the secret . it was a passing fad which lasted not even as long as one school year . finally , i understand that some time around 10 years ago , in israelian pop-music there had been a hit , which also became popular outside israel , particularly in west europe . the title seems to have meant " i love you " in pig latin - style manipulated hebrew . can anyone tell me anything of that song , but particularly of the hebrew pig latin ? does anyone know anything about pig latin e . g . in chinese , hindi , tamil , arabic , turkish , or suaheli ? does youth slang exist in amerindian languages , in australian aborigine , or other languages of pre-industrial communities ? best regards to all , waruno - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - waruno mahdi tel : + 49 30 8413-5301 faradayweg 4 - 6 fax : + 49 30 8413-3155 14195 berlin email : mahdi @ fhi-berlin . mpg . de germany www : http : / / w3 . rz-berlin . mpg . de / ~ wm / - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
