Language, Larpangarpuage or Anguagelay—Whatever You Call It, It’s Complicated!

Learning correct verb tenses and grammatical rules can be confusing, but add jibberish word games, and language gets REALLY complicated.

My mother and her siblings spoke Arp. Mom claimed they invented this game when they were kids, but a quick search online shows that Arp was commonly spoken among school-age children when my mother was young.

It works like this:

When a vowel or vowel sound (a, e, i, o, u, or y as in why) is found, “arp” is placed in front of it. Two or more vowels together are treated as one.

If a vowel or vowel sound occurs as the final letter of a word, it is only given an “arp” if it is the only vowel or vowel sound in the word.

eg. fish becomes farpish 
Harry becomes Harparry 
condition becomes carpondarpitarpion

Mom and her siblings spoke Arp until the days they died. When the three of them were together, for the rest of us it was like visiting a foreign country.

Arp is just one of many jibberish languages.

Pig Latin is more familiar:

Pick any English word. Next, move the first consonant or consonant cluster to the end of the word. Now add “ay” to the end of the word. That’s all there is to it; you’ve formed a word in Pig Latin.

eg. fish becomes ishfay
Harry becomes Arryhay
condition becomes onditioncay

Supposedly, Thomas Jefferson maintained some privacy by composing coded letters in Pig Latin to relatives and close friends.

Jibberish, or jargon, languages transcend place and time. They have existed at least since the Victorian era.

In Victorian England, merchants used “Back Speak” to converse behind buyers’ backs.

Words were spoken backward.

eg. fish becomes hsif
Harry becomes Yrrah
condition becomes noitidnoc

Black slaves in the American South invented a language called “Double Dutch”; in the early 20th century, German dock workers created a jibberish language called “Kedelkloppersprook;” and in the 1970s, the kid’s TV show Zoom made “Ubbi dubbi” popular with the school-aged set (all you have to do is say “ub” before every vowel sound).

(Do you want to speak Minion-ease?
There’s an English to Minion translator online!)

The list of jibberish games is considerable. Check out LingoJam online to translate English to Arp, Pig Latin, even Shakespearean and Morse Code—or create some jibberish of your own!

LANGUAGE.
Whatever the form—it’s complicated!

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Quiz: Those “Cray-Cray” New Words!

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New words are constantly slipping into our vocabulary. Let’s see how many of these you can define without looking them up. Give yourself 5 points for each correct answer and an additional 25 points for the bonus entry.  Answers are at the end of this post.

snervous (adjective–5 points)

mansplain (verb–5 points)

Squatch (noun–5 points)

glamp (verb–5 points)

cray-cray (noun–5 points)

demonym (noun–5 points)

Chiweenie (noun–5 points)

subtweet (noun–5 points)

aquafaba (noun–5 points)

schneid (noun–5 points)

onboarding (noun–5 points)

ghost (verb–5 points)

noob (noun–5 points)

bitcoin (noun–5 points)

facepalm (verb–5 points)

BONUS:
word salad (noun–25 points)

ANSWERS:

snervous:  to be scared and nervous at the same time

mansplain: to explain something to a woman in a condescending way

Squatch: nickname for Sasquatch

glamp: to camp with with amenities not usually found in the wild

cray-cray: anything that seems crazy

demonym: a word used to denote a person who is from or inhabits a particular place (Sooner, Hoosier)

Chiweenie: cross between a Chihauhau and a dachshund

subtweet: term for a mocking or critical tweet that alludes to another Twitter user (often without directly mentioning the user’s name)

aquafaba: the liquid that results when beans are cooked in water

schneid: a losing streak

onboarding: the act of orienting and training a new employee

ghost: to abruptly cut off contact with someone by not accepting phone calls, instant messages, etc.

noob: a person who recently started a new activity

bitcoin: a digital currency created for use in peer-to-peer online transactions
(I admit, I still don’t “totally” understand how bitcoining works.)

facepalm: to cover one’s face with the hand as an expression of embarrassment, dismay, or exasperation

BONUS:
Word salad: a string of empty, incoherent, unintelligible, or nonsensical words or comments

How well did you do?

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“Hey, Dude! Where’d That Word Come From?”

Hey, Dude, don’t make it bad.
Take a sad song and make it better . . .

If you recognized those as the first words of a popular Beatles song, then you likely spotted the error. John Lennon and Paul McCartney wrote  Hey Jude to comfort Lennon’s young son, Julian, during Lennon’s divorce from Julian’s mother, Cynthia—ancient history! Had they written Hey Jude today, they might have called it “Hey Dude!”

The word “dude” pops up everywhere these days.

In America, it first became popular in the 19th century when it described fashion-conscious men who dressed and acted like wealthy Europeans.

“Hey, look at that dude!”

From the New-York Mirror of February 24, 1883:

“. . . a new and valuable addition has been made to the slang vocabulary. … We refer to the term “Dood.” For a correct definition of the expression the anxious inquirer has only to turn to the tight-trousered, brief-coated, eye-glassed, fancy-vested, sharp-toes shod, vapid youth who abounds in the Metropolis at present. …

As the American West evolved and Easterners, “city slickers”, moved west, the word “dude” described a man from the city, clueless about country life.

By the early 20th century, former dudes saw a business opportunity providing vacationing dudes from the East with a country/cowboy experience, and the term “dude ranch” was born.

Fast-forward through the first half of the 20th century to the early 1960s, and you’ll find the word attributed to someone carefree and laid back. “Surfer dudes” hung out all day at beaches working on their tans and riding the waves.

This casual, laid back image of a “dude” persisted throughout the 20th century, mostly used by guys to greet and refer to each other in an informal way.

Then in the 21st century, the word came full circle and regained the same level of popularity it had in the early 1800s. Today everyone uses it, men, women, kids . . .

Dude. Dude? Dude!!!

What does it mean?
Is it a statement? A question? An exclamation?
You decide.

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