Pig Latin

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Template:Language game Pig Latin is a language game primarily used in English. An alternative British name for Pig Latin is backslang (not to be confused with the backslang used by the criminals of 19th century London, which was based on turning words backwards). Pig Latin is usually used by children for amusement or to converse in (perceived) privacy from adults. Conversely, adults sometimes use it to discuss sensitive topics they don't want very young children to overhear. Anglophone tourists sometimes use Pig Latin to obscure their conversations from the general public, when traveling in countries where English may be commonly spoken as a second language.

The impact of Pig Latin on standard English has been minimal, although certain Pig Latin translations, most notably ixnay and amscray, have been incorporated into English slang.

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Rules and variations

The usual rules for changing standard English into Pig Latin are:

  1. For words that begin with consonant sounds, move all the first consonant sounds to the end of the word and add "ay." Examples:
    • ball → all-bay
    • button → utton-bay
    • star → ar-stay
    • three → ee-thray
    • question → estion-quay
  2. For words that begin with vowel sounds (including silent consonants), simply add the syllable "ay" to the end of the word.
    • eagle → eagle-ay
    • honest → honest-ay (because the h is silent)

The most common variation in Pig Latin is to replace the "ay" in the second rule with other suffixes such as "way", "yay", or "hay"; thus, "eagle" → eagle-ay, eagle-way, eagle-yay, or eagle-hay, depending on the dialect.

The following Pig Latin example text is in the "way" dialect:
Is-thay is-way an-way example-way of-way Ig-pay Atin-lay. As-way ou-yay an-cay ee-say, it-way is-way illy-say, ut-bay ort-say of-way un-fay or-fay ildren-chay.
It translates back into standard English as:
"This is an example of Pig Latin. As you can see, it is silly, but sort of fun for children."
The above formulation reflects only one of several dialects of Pig Latin. Because Pig Latin is essentially a children's game, the rules vary from peer group to peer group, although the above generalizations are normative across most versions. Other common variations include:
  • moving only part of an initial consonant cluster to the end of the word, e.g. "street" → treet-say, reet-stay, or eet-stray
  • applying changes to each syllable in a word, e.g. "backslang" → ack-bay ang-slay, "cellphone" → ell-cay one-phay
  • transcription variations wherein the final syllable may or may not be hyphenated (Igpay Atinlay vs. Ig-pay Atin-lay)
  • variant capitalization schemes; e.g. "Michael Jordan" → Ichael-may Ordan-jay, ichael-May ordan-Jay, Ichael-May Ordan-Jay, etc.
Pig Latin is not one to one; that is, there exist pairs of English words that have the same translation into Pig Latin. For instance, in the "way" variation, "itch" and "witch" both become itch-way.
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Pig Latin in media and writing

Pig Latin appeared in The Three Stooges' comedic short film, "You Nazty Spy!", where the characters of three cabinet ministers, have the names "Mr. Ixnay", "Mr. Ohnay" (sic), and "Mr. Amscray".

In the leadoff dance routine in the Busby Berkeley musical "Gold Diggers of 1933", Ginger Rogers sang part of the song "You're in the Money" in Pig Latin.

The original television advertising campaign for Kellogg's Froot Loops, featuring Toucan Sam, made extensive use of Pig Latin (OOT-fray OOPS-lay), referred to in the campaign as "Toucan Talk".

Sandra Boynton, a popular children's author, conceived Grunt, a "pigorian chant" composition entirely in Pig Latin and genuine Latin. It was published as a book/CD combo.

In Louis Sachar's book Holes, a character is nicknamed "X-ray" because it is Pig Latin for "Rex" (this in fact spells "Exray").

In Robin Hood: Men in Tights, the Abbot presiding over the wedding of the Sheriff of Rottingham and Maid Marian conducts the opening rites in "The New Latin" - Pig Latin.

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Pig Latin in programming

A common exercise in programming classes to teach the concept of recursion is to define a procedure or function that, when given a word in normal English, yields the Pig Latin equivalent. The simplest way to write such a procedure is to set a base case for words beginning with vowels (add "ay"), and a recursive case that moves the first letter to the end of the word for re-evaluation.

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See also

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References

  • Barlow, Jessica. 2001. Individual differences in the production of initial consonant sequences in Pig Latin. Lingua 111:667-696.
  • Cowan, Nelson. 1989. Acquisition of Pig Latin: A Case Study. Journal of Child Language 16.2:365-386.
  • Day, R. 1973. On learning "secret languages." Haskins Laboratories Status Report on Speech Research 34:141-150.
  • Haycock, Arthur. Pig Latin. American Speech 8:3.81.
  • McCarthy, John. 1991. Reduplicative Infixation in Secret Languages [L'Infixation reduplicative dans les langages secrets]. Langages 25.101:11-29.
  • Vaux, Bert and Andrew Nevins. 2003. Underdetermination in language games: Survey and analysis of Pig Latin dialects. Linguistic Society of America Annual Meeting, Atlanta.
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External links

pl:Świńska łacina ru:Поросячья латынь simple:Pig Latin fi:Kontinkieli zh:兒童黑話 sv:Pig Latin

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