Language game Guide, Meaning , Facts, Information and Description
A language game is a concept developed by Ludwig Wittgenstein at the beginning of his book Philosophical Investigations. A language game is a simple language, combined with a context that shows what to do with the language. One example he gives is a language for building, containing two words, 'slab' and 'brick'. When A says 'slab' to B, B finds a slab and gives it to A; likewise, when A says 'brick' to B, B finds a brick and gives it to A. Language games are also known as play languages or ludlings.
In another sense, language games are not technically artificial languages so much as heuristics for altering language, like a code. They are used primarily by groups attempting to conceal their conversations from others. Most common examples are: Pig latin, which is used all over the globe; the Gibberish family, prevalent mainly in the United States and Hungary, and Verlan in France. Each of these languages games involves a usually simple standard transformation to speech, thus encoding it. The languages can be easily mentally encoded and decoded by a skilled speaker at the rate of normal speech.
A common difficulty with language games is that they are usually passed down orally. While written translations can be made, they are often imperfect, and thus spelling can vary widely. Some factions argue that words in these spoken tongues should simply be written the way they are pronounced, while others insist that the purity of language demands that the transformation remain visible when the words are imparted to paper. Contrary to what proponents of either side may tell you, there is no one definitive written lexicon for language games, but it is rather a matter of dialect.
See also word play, word game.
| Host Language | Game Name | Basic Rules | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bulgarian | Insert 'pe' before each syllable. | ||
| Dutch | Reversed elements and words. | A mercantile code | |
| English (etc.) | Pig latin | Move the first consonant in each syllable, if any, to to end of the syllable and add 'ay'. | |
| English (etc.) | Pig greek | Insert 'ob' after each consonant. | |
| English | Bicycle | Insert 'es' (SAMPA /@s/) after each consonant. | |
| English | Cockney rhyming slang | Canonical rhyming word pairs; speakers often drop the second word of common pairs. | "trouble & strife" (or just "trouble") = "wife" |
| English | Double Dutch | Insert 'egg' or 'ag' before a vowel if the vowel indicates a new syllable. Inserting at the beginning of a word which starts with a vowel seems to be a matter of preference. | "How are you doing?" = "Heggow eggare yeggou deggoegging?" |
| English | Gibberish | Insert 'itherg' before the first vowel in a syllable. | Gibberish is also a family of related language games. |
| English | Ubbi dubbi | Insert "ub" before each spoken vowel. | From the PBS children's show Zoom; part of the Gibberish family |
| English | Yardle bardle | ||
| English | Zambuda | ||
| Farsi | Zabon-e-zargari | ||
| Finnish | Sanamuunnokset | Swap first syllables of words. | A and Ä, O and Ö and U and Y are swapped where necessary to make the resulting words natural to speak. |
| Finnish | Kontinkieli | Add word 'kontti' after each word and apply the same conversion as in sanamuunnokset. | Finnish counterpart of Pig Latin. This game is also called 'siansaksa'. |
| French | Louchebem | Move the initial consonant to the end and add 'var'. For suffixes, prepend 'l' ('L'). | |
| French | Verlan | Simple transformations and slang from Arabic. | |
| German | 'Lav' inserted after some vowel sounds. | ||
| German | B-Language | Each vowel or diphthong is reduplicted with a leading 'b'. | "Deutsche Sprache" = "Deubeutschebe Sprabachebe" |
| Hebrew | Bet-Language | Identical to the German B-Language described above. | |
| Hungarian | madárnyelv (birds' language) | Repeat each vowel and add 'v' | A variety of Gibberish (eg. látok I see -> lávátovok) |
| Hungarian | madárnyelv (birds' language) | Repeat each vowel and add 'rg' | (eg. látok I see -> lárgátorgok) |
| Cantonese | Ong-Language | Spelling out words, using plain vowel sounds and 'ong' at the end of each consonant. | "Let's go" = "Long ee tong song, gong oh." |
| Indonesian | Prokem | Includes simple transformations of different types, acronyms and ordinary slang. | A bibliography of references pertaining to Prokem and other Indonesian-Malaysian language games: [1] |
| Italian | Latino Maccheronico | ||
| Japanese | Ba-bi-bu-be-bo | ||
| Mandarin | Fanqie | ||
| Portuguese | Sima | ||
| Portuguese | Língua do Pę | ||
| Russian | Fufajskij yazyk | ||
| Russian | Porosyachia Latin | ||
| Spanish | 'F' is added to certain syllables. | ||
| Spanish | Geringoso | Each vowel is reduplicated with a separating 'p'. | "No sabe nada" = "Nopo sapabepe napadapa" |
| Spanish | Vesre | Syllable order is inverted. | "Muchacho" = "Chochamu" |
| Swedish | Allsprĺket | The first consonant in each word ends with 'all'. | |
| Swedish | Fikonsprĺket | Each word is split in two, one beginning with 'fi' and one ending in 'kon'. | |
| Swedish | I-sprikit | All vowels are changed to 'i'. | |
| Swedish | Rövarsprĺket | Consonants are changed to ' | |
| Vietnamese | Choose a vowel. Suffix each word with the initial consonant, if any, and then the vowel. | Using 'a', 'co bic' = 'coca bicba'. |
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