Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the Short Stuff. I'm Josh. There's
Speaker 1: Chuck and Dave and Jerry are both here in spirit
Speaker 1: and this is short stuff. I'm sorry this is or
Speaker 1: shay off stay. I had a hard time with this
Speaker 1: episode research wise, because, uh, this how stuff works article
Speaker 1: keeps talking about what a joke it is and how
Speaker 1: easy it is, and it's like, it's not the Enigma code.
Speaker 1: But I didn't do pig Latin growing up, so it's
Speaker 1: just still confuses me. Like I get it, but I like,
Speaker 1: I don't just hear someone speak it and I can say, oh,
Speaker 1: this is what they're saying, and I have to write
Speaker 1: it down and move a bunch of dumb letters around,
Speaker 1: right right, yeah, you, I'm right there with you, Like
Speaker 1: I have to stop and think about it. You know,
Speaker 1: how to say a certain word or spell it or
Speaker 1: what somebody's saying is very difficult too. But I think
Speaker 1: that's kind of because pig Latin it wasn't like the
Speaker 1: cool thing when we were growing up. Where were younger,
Speaker 1: we probably or I should say way way older, we
Speaker 1: probably um would have been a little better at pig Latin.
Speaker 1: It's just it is very easy to learn the rules
Speaker 1: of it are very easy, but to speak it fluently
Speaker 1: would be, I'm sure very difficult and take a lot
Speaker 1: of practice, for sure. Yeah, and there are so many
Speaker 1: more things that you can do with your time. They're
Speaker 1: more constructed to try and be fluent in pig Latin.
Speaker 1: But when you're a little kid and the only the
Speaker 1: only thing to play with is a hoop with a
Speaker 1: stick that you chased down the hill, pig Latin is
Speaker 1: pretty attractive, you know what I mean. Yeah, so pig
Speaker 1: Latin is uh we'll talk a little bit about the
Speaker 1: history in a sec but basically, if you take the
Speaker 1: word cat and we got this from the House to
Speaker 1: Works article at way is way big pay at and
Speaker 1: lee what is pig Latin? And see that annoys me
Speaker 1: just reading it? Uh, so what you do with cat
Speaker 1: it would end up as at k. So you take
Speaker 1: the letter at the beginning of the word, move it
Speaker 1: to the end, add the syllable a y and that's
Speaker 1: sort of it, right that, I mean that that is
Speaker 1: all there is to it. So you'd have at k
Speaker 1: that's pretty simple. At k um and that's it. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's all there there really is to it. Like if
Speaker 1: you run into a word that has a couple of syllables. Um.
Speaker 1: They use the example of curtain. Um. There's a couple
Speaker 1: of things you can do. You can say artn k,
Speaker 1: That's what I would do. But if you're if you
Speaker 1: were like fluent in pig Latin, you might say no,
Speaker 1: no no. Each syllable gets messed around with this, so
Speaker 1: you have um er k tin a no er k k,
Speaker 1: which I mean like almost no one's going to know
Speaker 1: what you're talking about, especially at first. But if you
Speaker 1: and your buddy are really good at pig Latin, then
Speaker 1: you've got your own little language that no one can
Speaker 1: can come in too. And in your world is is
Speaker 1: shatter proof. That's right. And uh. There were some predecessors
Speaker 1: two pig Latin, dog Latin, and hog Latin, which they think, um,
Speaker 1: the name hog Latin might have eventually gotten to pig Latin,
Speaker 1: even though dog Latin and hog Latin were not anything
Speaker 1: like pig Latin. Um. Apparently it was just like a
Speaker 1: fake Latin that people made up. Like Shakespeare. I think
Speaker 1: it did a little. Uh, I think dog Latin and
Speaker 1: it's funny. They really explained the Shakespeare passage, which I
Speaker 1: don't even think we should get into but no, no, no,
Speaker 1: you co starred. I'll be Holofernes. All right, jeez, everyone,
Speaker 1: we present to a dramatic reading from Shakespeare's Loves Labor Lost.
Speaker 1: Oh I'm co co starring, yea, your co star man,
Speaker 1: this is where our TV show didn't work. Oh wait,
Speaker 1: I'm chuck alright, co starred. Go to thou hast it
Speaker 1: add dung hill at fingers ends as they say, oh,
Speaker 1: smell false latin dunghill for and then okay, we can't
Speaker 1: go over that again. So this article takes great paints
Speaker 1: to explains, to explain all that, and then at the
Speaker 1: very end says, the joke is much funnier when you
Speaker 1: explain it at links, and I'm like, no, that's never
Speaker 1: been true for any joke ever. Right, well so, but
Speaker 1: the point is is like what Shakespeare was calling this
Speaker 1: dog latt or hog Latin or dog Latin is basically
Speaker 1: more like Cockney rhyming slang than what we think of
Speaker 1: as pig Latin. He was replacing dunghill for ungium, which
Speaker 1: is fingernail, which was right, pretty clever words smithery, right,
Speaker 1: and it's funny, like it's pretty rich. The two of
Speaker 1: us just mocking Shakespeare right now, but but that that
Speaker 1: this was like, not, it has nothing to do with
Speaker 1: pig Latin, even though they're like clear, Really, hog Latin
Speaker 1: was a direct predecessor of pig Latin, even even if
Speaker 1: they aren't similar. Somebody said, oh, we'll call this one
Speaker 1: pig Latin rather than hog Latin. Yeah, and I think
Speaker 1: even Edgar Allan Poe mentioned both dog and pig Latin.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, dog Latin and pig Greek. Uh. And it
Speaker 1: was pretty disparaging of those. But again, it was not
Speaker 1: the pig Latin that we know. And maybe we should
Speaker 1: take a break and talk about when that dumb thing
Speaker 1: came around right after this ko way, chuck okay, chuck um.
Speaker 1: So pig Latin, as we understand, it was around by um,
Speaker 1: the late eighteen hundreds at the latest. They think, Yeah,
Speaker 1: there was I think in the Ox. It was in
Speaker 1: the Atlantic. Rather, it says they all spoke a queer
Speaker 1: jargon which they themselves had invented. It was something like
Speaker 1: the well known pig Latin that all sorts of children
Speaker 1: like to play with. Uh. And it looks like it
Speaker 1: was invented by kids to talk about stuff that their
Speaker 1: parents couldn't understand. That totally makes sense. Um. And again
Speaker 1: here's where that famous Enigma code line comes in. That
Speaker 1: like the parents could could crack it pretty easily. Um.
Speaker 1: The point was, I think maybe that it became cute
Speaker 1: and just widely appreciated because maybe this is my own
Speaker 1: personal theory, kids thought that they were speaking in a
Speaker 1: way their parents couldn't understand, and their parents did fully understand,
Speaker 1: so they allowed it to keep going on. Is like
Speaker 1: the gret language, um with with this kind of like
Speaker 1: little bit of you know, delight at the childhood nous
Speaker 1: of the whole thing. That's what I think. That's why
Speaker 1: I think pig Latin got traction originally. Yeah, And it's
Speaker 1: it's kind of weird that I have such contempt for
Speaker 1: it because I've seen examples in movies and in real
Speaker 1: life where and it's usually seems like young girls have
Speaker 1: made up their own little secret language, and I just
Speaker 1: find that like exhaustively adorable and very funny and cool.
Speaker 1: But there's something about pig Latin that just ugs baby me.
Speaker 1: Oh good, one good one chuck, that was very good. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So um, one of the things that I love about
Speaker 1: pig Latin are twofold and they both come in the
Speaker 1: early twentieth century. So pig Latin basically had its golden age,
Speaker 1: It's heyday where it was like part of the popular
Speaker 1: culture and like the first uh three or four decades
Speaker 1: of the twentieth century. And um, it showed up Chuck
Speaker 1: in this this this song called pig Latin Love, which
Speaker 1: was an Arthur Fields record from and did you listen
Speaker 1: to it? Of course it's adorable. I looked, I looked
Speaker 1: everywhere to see if it's in the public domain, and
Speaker 1: couldn't find it. So I'm not sure if we can
Speaker 1: play anything. It's got to be I would think so too.
Speaker 1: So we'll say, let's play a little bit here, and
Speaker 1: then if do you don't hear anything, it means that
Speaker 1: we found out it is in the public domain, in
Speaker 1: which case go look it up yourself. But here's a
Speaker 1: little clip of pig Latin Love by Arthur Fields. Maybe correctly. Goodness,
Speaker 1: it really is. And so I just think it's an adorable,
Speaker 1: adorable song. But the fact that somebody had a popular
Speaker 1: song about this shows just how popular it was at
Speaker 1: the time, how how prevalent it was in pig almost
Speaker 1: in pig culture. And pop culture. I'm sure in pig
Speaker 1: culture they're like, stop making fun of us. We don't
Speaker 1: talk like that. Yeah, we used to have an old
Speaker 1: patrola with some old records, and uh it was it
Speaker 1: was always kind of fun to um to put those on.
Speaker 1: Like we never did it as a family, like sat
Speaker 1: around and listen to him, but when friends would come
Speaker 1: over at papan on, it's kind of kind of cool.
Speaker 1: My dad had um Jackie Gleason records, and uh, I
Speaker 1: used to tell them that they were so square, the
Speaker 1: records themselves were square. He would be like, what do
Speaker 1: you mean that's great? Uh So the other use, I
Speaker 1: think you were probably talking about The Three Stooges, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: did you watch that too? I didn't, Actually, I didn't
Speaker 1: get around to that one. It's just adorable. I can't
Speaker 1: wait to do our episodes on the Three Stooges or
Speaker 1: five episode, seven part episodes on the Three Stooges. But
Speaker 1: there's a particular one in UM ninety eight called Tassels
Speaker 1: in the Air where Mo and Larry are trying to
Speaker 1: teach Curly pig Land. It's a good like full minute
Speaker 1: or so like lesson on pig Land. Curly just can't
Speaker 1: quite pick up. But so he's like, so I'm oh
Speaker 1: may and that's airy lay and you're early and curly
Speaker 1: goes que and they're like no, I think he gets
Speaker 1: slapped as a result. But um, it's it's pretty cute.
Speaker 1: So here's the deal, though, pig Latin is not I mean,
Speaker 1: technically it's a language, but it's it's really um something
Speaker 1: called back slang or a coded language. Um, it's not
Speaker 1: like I know, we covered Esperanto many many years ago
Speaker 1: on the show and uh like kling on. Those are
Speaker 1: really invented languages with vocabulary and grammar and syntax, and
Speaker 1: they don't rely on English as the basis of it.
Speaker 1: This is not that. No, there's no pig Latin without English.
Speaker 1: That's it. And it follows all of the same vocabulary
Speaker 1: rules and like you said, syntax and everything that English follows.
Speaker 1: It's just you're rearranging it a little bit. Um. One
Speaker 1: of the other categories that pig Latin qualifies as a
Speaker 1: coded language, Like the reason that this is done is
Speaker 1: to disguise what you're saying. Even if it is not
Speaker 1: just kind of a feeble attempt at disguise, it's still
Speaker 1: qualifies it as a coded language. Yeah, and there are
Speaker 1: examples of stuff like this in other countries. Apparently in
Speaker 1: France there's something called verlon that switches up the first
Speaker 1: and last syllables of a word. Um, Spanish has uh
Speaker 1: here gonza. Oh nice. I guess that's how you pronounce it,
Speaker 1: which where you double the vowels and put a P
Speaker 1: between them. So gato, which is cat is gaba topo
Speaker 1: sounds kind of cool? It does you take Japan? Okay?
Speaker 1: Japan has something I was asking you me about this.
Speaker 1: She knew exactly what I was talking about. Um called
Speaker 1: bobby go b A b I g o, and g
Speaker 1: O indicates a language in Japan, So like English go
Speaker 1: or something like that would be the English language. This
Speaker 1: is like bubba language. And it's because you insert be
Speaker 1: sounding syllables into the already extant syllables of a word.
Speaker 1: So sushi becomes subu shibi. I love that word. Yeah,
Speaker 1: subushi bi subushibi. Yeah, and that's bobbigo in Japan. Let's
Speaker 1: go get some superb I just think it's so great
Speaker 1: that everybody's like this language interest is interesting, but we
Speaker 1: could make it even even better. Let's try kids, Yeah, kids,
Speaker 1: are great. Uh, well, you got anything else? I got
Speaker 1: nothing else. I don't either so or we go or
Speaker 1: stay off or shay off, stay to a that's that
Speaker 1: all right. Stuff you should know is a production of
Speaker 1: iHeart Radios How Stuff Works. For more podcasts my heart Radio,
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