The word snoop - Ursula Dubosarsky 2009

Pig Latin
Who likes playing games?

Have you ever wanted to speak a secret language? Here’s an easy one to learn. It’s called Pig Latin.

Now, Latin is the language that the ancient Romans used to speak, and you know what pigs are. (Hint: They go oink, oink!) Can pigs really speak Latin? Well, no, actually. Pig Latin has got nothing to do with Latin or pigs. It’s just a funny kind of language-game children and adults have been playing for years. Like rhyming slang, it may have started as a kind of thieves’ language, a way of disguising what you were saying to confuse anyone who might have been listening.

Even though nobody really knows who started it, or why it’s called Pig Latin, we do know that it’s been around since at least the 1920s—in the playground, in movies, in songs and in stories. The famous old movie star Ginger Rogers sang a song in Pig Latin in the movie Gold Diggers of 1933. And if you ever get a chance, listen to the wonderful folk singer Lead Belly singing “The Pig Latin Song,” which he recorded way back in the 1940s. Do some snooping and see if you can still find a recording of it online.

When the Word Snoop was at school, all the children in the playground spoke Pig Latin. Maybe your teacher knows it, or your parents, or your grandparents. But it’s not just old folks. Even Krusty the Clown on The Simpsons has been known to speak a bit of Pig Latin!

Here’s how it works. It’s pretty easy, once you get the hang of it. Take away the first letter of the word you want to say, and put it at the end of that word. So for the word DOG, for example, take away the D and put it at the end, so you’ve got OG-D. Then you follow it by the two letters AY. That’s it! So DOG in Pig Latin becomes OG-DAY. Can you work out what CAT would be? Think about it. That’s right—AT-CAY!

See! Easy-ay! Oh! That reminds me. There’s just one more rule. If a word begins with a vowel (a, e, i, o, u), then you just put AY on the end of the word, without taking the first letter away. So the word EASY, as you see, just becomes EASY-AY. And if a word begins with something like a CH or a TH or a SH, like SHAKE THAT CHOP, you take the whole sound, not just the first letter—AKE-SHAY AT-THAY OP-CHAY! (Not that hard!)

At first it might seem difficult to remember, but once you get a bit of practice you’ll be able to say whole sentences quite easily. Somebody has even translated the Bible into Pig Latin. Wow! I mean, OW-WAY!

Pig Latin is a game for the English language, but lots of other places in the world have similar secret languages that children love to play around with, although some of them are a lot more complicated than Pig Latin. In Argentina there’s something called Jeringozo,in France there’s Verlan,and in Japan, Ba-bi-bu-be-bo. Maybe you or someone you know speaks a language that has its own kind of Pig Latin?

Can you work out what this message in Pig Latin means?

ODAY-TAYIS-AYY-MAY

IRTHDAY-BAY.

AN-CAY OU-YAY OME-CAY

O-TAY Y-MAY ARTY-PAY?

MM-HAY. AYBE-MAY. I’LL-AYINK-THAY

ABOUT-AYIT-AY.

(Pssst! If you get stuck, check out the Answers page at the end of the chapter.)