Dawn Reader

Dawn Reader
from Open Door Coffee Co.; Hudson, OH; Oct. 26, 2016

Saturday, March 24, 2018

The first foreign language I learned ...



... was Pig Latin. Or: Igpay Atinla. I learned it in the only classroom that mattered to me, really, in elementary school: the playground. Recess. Some of my friends were conversing fluently in what sounded to me like nonsense--until I figured it out (or, more likely, until one of them deigned to explain it to me).

And then! I was Pig-Latiny full-time! I don't know how long I thought it was some kind of secret language that only my friends and I knew. Probably when I said something vaguely rude at home (in Pig Latin) and was promptly punished (my parents were good at that, prompt punishment; they got a lot of practice with me around for all those years).

Anyway, the other day ... in the coffee shop ... a friend there was telling folks about how he was tutoring someone who didn't speak English. Nor did the friend speak his student's language. I chirped: Try Pig Latin!

And everyone sort of laughed, remembering, I presume, their own playground days. And mistakes with their parents.

Then, of course, I got curious. How old is this "language"? Where did it come from?

So I asked Mr./Ms. Google. And here's what I've discovered ...

  • Oh, are there a lot of PL sites! (Even some YouTube videos offering instruction.)
  • Dictionary.com notes that some words in PL have now entered the general speech: ixnay and amscray, for example.
  • Trusty Wikipedia says it goes back to very early parodies of Latin--and mentions an exchange in the Bard's Love's Labour's Lost that includes the term "false Latin."
    • Holofernes: O, I smell false Latin ... (5.1).
  • Wikipedia also notes some 19th-century mentions of PL in some periodicals.
  • The modern version of it, says Wikipedia, comes from a song from 1919 (the year my mom was born), "Pig Latin Love." (Link to the song.)
  • Wikipedia also says that September is Pig Latin Month and that Sept. 5 is Pig Latin Awareness Day. (Citations for these dates are not there--surprised? Urprisedsa?)
So that's it. I'm weary of it already and am in serious need of appingna.

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