Children’s Pidgins

[John_Mace]

@Dr. Drake

I’m torn. You’re doing exactly what I do when I jump down people’s throats for using “myth” to mean “something untrue,” abusing the technical academic definition for their cheap and lazy vernacular thrills.

Children’s pidgins are known as such, and have been for over half a century. The Opies published their book in the 1950s. Nobody thinks they are the same thing as true pidgins, the sorts that linguists talk about, but at some point somebody must have made a connection, and the name sticks.

Children’s pidgin <does not equal> pidgin, but it’s still a perfectly appropriate term to use for the things the OP is talking about.

I’ve never heard that term applied to secret languages. I did a yahoo search of “children’s pidgin” and got all of 29 hits.

[Dr.Drake]

@John Mace

I’ve never heard that term applied to secret languages. I did a yahoo search of “children’s pidgin” and got all of 29 hits.

Odd, I replied yesterday but I see the hamsters have been snacking.

I provided you with an academic source that uses the term; do you not believe me? That’s your right, but you can check the source. In any case, it’s only one type of secret language, not the whole shebang. Two reasons why your search may not have validated the use of the term:

1. It’s rather old-fashioned. A yahoo search will tell you about the contemporary language, but not so much about twentieth-century terms that appeared in copyrighted publications.

2. Folklorists who study secret languages use the term “pidgin” as applied to children, possibly but not necessarily the set phrase “children’s pidgin.” (I don’t think linguists ever used it this way but I don’t know either way.)

I think folklorists these days are more likely to use “secret language” than anything else. I suspect (but again, I don’t know) that they started using “pidgin” because it was what their informants themselves used, and then stopped once they developed a more sophisticated level of analysis.

OED doesn’t have any cites of pidgin in this usage, but then, it doesn’t have “ludling” either.

[clairobscur]

In France, there used to be the “javanais” (lit. : javanese), where one would randomely add “ga” or “da” or “ar” or whatever else with “a”, depending on the versions, here and there in the words. I don’t think any child still uses that.
There’s also the “verlan” where the order of the syllabs is reversed (for instance “bizzare” becoming “zarbi” or “verlan” itself coming from “l’envers”). However, I think it’s a different kettle of fish because 1) it generally is used only for a limited selection of words 2) It is used more by teens than by children 3) many “verlan” words stuck and became usual slang. Actually, some were even reversed twice, for instance “femme” (woman) becoming the very common “meuf” and later “feum”.

[sunstone]

When I was a kid, we had a language that we used. Examples of how it sounded include:

Did you eat your supper? = Divid yivou iveat yivour sivupiver?. The word hippopotomus would be “Hi-vip-pi-vo-pi-vot-ti-vo-mi-vus”

It seems that we inserted "i-v"in the middle of the words, but as two syllables…so that the example for the word “did =“Divid” and pronounced “Die”-Vid”

Anyone else use this form? I’ve never met anyone since my childhood who uses this, nor have I heard of it being used. As I can’t exactly go around speaking it to discover like lingual brothers and sisters, maybe one of the great dopers can help me out.

BTW. I grew up in rural S California, and was the child of immigrants from NW Arkansas. I haven’t spoken this for at least 55 years…it is amazing that I can still speak it easily!

So what say you?

[TheLoadedDog]

Australian butchers (and maybe those elsewhere too) have traditionally spoken Rechtub Klat, which is simply backwards English with a few modifications to make it easier. Mostly it’s used for discussing women who walk into the shop. They are always surprised to hear a “civilian” speak it, so I sometimes jokingly ask for a discount on the meat because it’s “on doog”.