Re: Slang and word creation

izzy wrote:
> http://archiver.rootsweb.com/th/read/ABOUT-WORDS/2002-12/1040626556
>
> The "secret languages" of children are almost guaranteed
> to change at least once every generation. If they didn't,
> they would not serve their primary purpose: providing a
> medium of communication that adults do not understand.
>
> Compare Pig Latin, Turkey Irish, Oppish, etc. Sometimes,
> words from a kid's language would be borrowed into the
> primary language community. For example, Pig Latin
> "ixnay" and "amscray" are understood by many English
> speakers.

I think you have a point, but hasn't Pig Latin ayedstay onstantcay
orfay a-ay onglay imetay? And did children ever use it to keep
secrets from adults?

> Adults also use secret languages. First, they S-P-E-L-L
> words they don't want little kids to understand. In the
> case of first generation Americans, parents use the
> language of the Old Country. (In my case, that was
> Yiddish.)

Strangely enough, almost everyone who I've heard refer to this practice
said that it worked. I 've heard only one person say she learned her
parents' native language (Polish) so she could understand what they
didn't want her to hear.

> When I was in grammar school, the Jewish kids passed
> English notes in class that were written with Hebrew
> characters. In other words, English completely
> transliterated using Hebrew characters.

You're American and you refer to grammar school? Are you from Chicago,
by any chance?

How did you transliterate "w", by the way? (I know how to do "ch" and
the "j" sound.)

> Greek Orthodox kids would transliterate English using
> the Greek alphabet. Mary Poppadopoulos taught me the
> Greek alphabet when we were in the 5th grade.
>
> See
> http://archiver.rootsweb.com/th/read/ABOUT-WORDS/2002-12/1040702078
> for examples of rapid, cataclysmic change.
>
> For a language that was very resistant to change, consider American
> Indian sign language. It was still comprehensible coast-to-coast long
> after the various Amerindian spoken languages had become mutually
> unintelligible.

They were mutually unintelligible as far back as anybody knows.

--
Jerry Friedman

.

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