December 30, 2020 • 12 mins
Turns out we have little kids from the 19th century, the Three Stooges, and an odd musical composer named Arthur Fields to thank for pig latin.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hey, and welcome to the Short Stuff. I'm Josh. There's
Chuck and Dave and Jerry are both here in spirit
and this is short stuff. I'm sorry this is or
shay off stay. I had a hard time with this
episode research wise, because, uh, this how stuff works article
(00:26):
keeps talking about what a joke it is and how
easy it is, and it's like, it's not the Enigma code.
But I didn't do pig Latin growing up, so it's
just still confuses me. Like I get it, but I like,
I don't just hear someone speak it and I can say, oh,
this is what they're saying, and I have to write
it down and move a bunch of dumb letters around,
right right, yeah, you, I'm right there with you, Like
(00:48):
I have to stop and think about it. You know,
how to say a certain word or spell it or
what somebody's saying is very difficult too. But I think
that's kind of because pig Latin it wasn't like the
cool thing when we were growing up. Where were younger,
we probably or I should say way way older, we
probably um would have been a little better at pig Latin.
It's just it is very easy to learn the rules
(01:09):
of it are very easy, but to speak it fluently
would be, I'm sure very difficult and take a lot
of practice, for sure. Yeah, and there are so many
more things that you can do with your time. They're
more constructed to try and be fluent in pig Latin.
But when you're a little kid and the only the
only thing to play with is a hoop with a
(01:30):
stick that you chased down the hill, pig Latin is
pretty attractive, you know what I mean. Yeah, so pig
Latin is uh we'll talk a little bit about the
history in a sec but basically, if you take the
word cat and we got this from the House to
Works article at way is way big pay at and
lee what is pig Latin? And see that annoys me
just reading it? Uh, so what you do with cat
(01:52):
it would end up as at k. So you take
the letter at the beginning of the word, move it
to the end, add the syllable a y and that's
sort of it, right that, I mean that that is
all there is to it. So you'd have at k
that's pretty simple. At k um and that's it. I mean,
(02:13):
that's all there there really is to it. Like if
you run into a word that has a couple of syllables. Um.
They use the example of curtain. Um. There's a couple
of things you can do. You can say artn k,
That's what I would do. But if you're if you
were like fluent in pig Latin, you might say no,
no no. Each syllable gets messed around with this, so
(02:34):
you have um er k tin a no er k k,
which I mean like almost no one's going to know
what you're talking about, especially at first. But if you
and your buddy are really good at pig Latin, then
you've got your own little language that no one can
can come in too. And in your world is is
(02:54):
shatter proof. That's right. And uh. There were some predecessors
two pig Latin, dog Latin, and hog Latin, which they think, um,
the name hog Latin might have eventually gotten to pig Latin,
even though dog Latin and hog Latin were not anything
like pig Latin. Um. Apparently it was just like a
(03:16):
fake Latin that people made up. Like Shakespeare. I think
it did a little. Uh, I think dog Latin and
it's funny. They really explained the Shakespeare passage, which I
don't even think we should get into but no, no, no,
you co starred. I'll be Holofernes. All right, jeez, everyone,
(03:37):
we present to a dramatic reading from Shakespeare's Loves Labor Lost.
Oh I'm co co starring, yea, your co star man,
this is where our TV show didn't work. Oh wait,
I'm chuck alright, co starred. Go to thou hast it
(03:58):
add dung hill at fingers ends as they say, oh,
smell false latin dunghill for and then okay, we can't
go over that again. So this article takes great paints
(04:19):
to explains, to explain all that, and then at the
very end says, the joke is much funnier when you
explain it at links, and I'm like, no, that's never
been true for any joke ever. Right, well so, but
the point is is like what Shakespeare was calling this
dog latt or hog Latin or dog Latin is basically
more like Cockney rhyming slang than what we think of
as pig Latin. He was replacing dunghill for ungium, which
(04:43):
is fingernail, which was right, pretty clever words smithery, right,
and it's funny, like it's pretty rich. The two of
us just mocking Shakespeare right now, but but that that
this was like, not, it has nothing to do with
pig Latin, even though they're like clear, Really, hog Latin
was a direct predecessor of pig Latin, even even if
(05:04):
they aren't similar. Somebody said, oh, we'll call this one
pig Latin rather than hog Latin. Yeah, and I think
even Edgar Allan Poe mentioned both dog and pig Latin.
I'm sorry, dog Latin and pig Greek. Uh. And it
was pretty disparaging of those. But again, it was not
the pig Latin that we know. And maybe we should
take a break and talk about when that dumb thing
(05:26):
came around right after this ko way, chuck okay, chuck um.
(06:02):
So pig Latin, as we understand, it was around by um,
the late eighteen hundreds at the latest. They think, Yeah,
there was I think in the Ox. It was in
the Atlantic. Rather, it says they all spoke a queer
jargon which they themselves had invented. It was something like
the well known pig Latin that all sorts of children
(06:24):
like to play with. Uh. And it looks like it
was invented by kids to talk about stuff that their
parents couldn't understand. That totally makes sense. Um. And again
here's where that famous Enigma code line comes in. That
like the parents could could crack it pretty easily. Um.
The point was, I think maybe that it became cute
(06:47):
and just widely appreciated because maybe this is my own
personal theory, kids thought that they were speaking in a
way their parents couldn't understand, and their parents did fully understand,
so they allowed it to keep going on. Is like
the gret language, um with with this kind of like
little bit of you know, delight at the childhood nous
of the whole thing. That's what I think. That's why
(07:09):
I think pig Latin got traction originally. Yeah, And it's
it's kind of weird that I have such contempt for
it because I've seen examples in movies and in real
life where and it's usually seems like young girls have
made up their own little secret language, and I just
find that like exhaustively adorable and very funny and cool.
(07:31):
But there's something about pig Latin that just ugs baby me.
Oh good, one good one chuck, that was very good. Yeah.
So um, one of the things that I love about
pig Latin are twofold and they both come in the
early twentieth century. So pig Latin basically had its golden age,
It's heyday where it was like part of the popular
culture and like the first uh three or four decades
(07:54):
of the twentieth century. And um, it showed up Chuck
in this this this song called pig Latin Love, which
was an Arthur Fields record from and did you listen
to it? Of course it's adorable. I looked, I looked
everywhere to see if it's in the public domain, and
couldn't find it. So I'm not sure if we can
(08:15):
play anything. It's got to be I would think so too.
So we'll say, let's play a little bit here, and
then if do you don't hear anything, it means that
we found out it is in the public domain, in
which case go look it up yourself. But here's a
little clip of pig Latin Love by Arthur Fields. Maybe correctly. Goodness,
it really is. And so I just think it's an adorable,
(08:36):
adorable song. But the fact that somebody had a popular
song about this shows just how popular it was at
the time, how how prevalent it was in pig almost
in pig culture. And pop culture. I'm sure in pig
culture they're like, stop making fun of us. We don't
talk like that. Yeah, we used to have an old
patrola with some old records, and uh it was it
(08:56):
was always kind of fun to um to put those on.
Like we never did it as a family, like sat
around and listen to him, but when friends would come
over at papan on, it's kind of kind of cool.
My dad had um Jackie Gleason records, and uh, I
used to tell them that they were so square, the
records themselves were square. He would be like, what do
(09:17):
you mean that's great? Uh So the other use, I
think you were probably talking about The Three Stooges, right, Yeah,
did you watch that too? I didn't, Actually, I didn't
get around to that one. It's just adorable. I can't
wait to do our episodes on the Three Stooges or
five episode, seven part episodes on the Three Stooges. But
there's a particular one in UM ninety eight called Tassels
(09:41):
in the Air where Mo and Larry are trying to
teach Curly pig Land. It's a good like full minute
or so like lesson on pig Land. Curly just can't
quite pick up. But so he's like, so I'm oh
may and that's airy lay and you're early and curly
(10:01):
goes que and they're like no, I think he gets
slapped as a result. But um, it's it's pretty cute.
So here's the deal, though, pig Latin is not I mean,
technically it's a language, but it's it's really um something
called back slang or a coded language. Um, it's not
like I know, we covered Esperanto many many years ago
(10:22):
on the show and uh like kling on. Those are
really invented languages with vocabulary and grammar and syntax, and
they don't rely on English as the basis of it.
This is not that. No, there's no pig Latin without English.
That's it. And it follows all of the same vocabulary
rules and like you said, syntax and everything that English follows.
(10:43):
It's just you're rearranging it a little bit. Um. One
of the other categories that pig Latin qualifies as a
coded language, Like the reason that this is done is
to disguise what you're saying. Even if it is not
just kind of a feeble attempt at disguise, it's still
qualifies it as a coded language. Yeah, and there are
examples of stuff like this in other countries. Apparently in
(11:06):
France there's something called verlon that switches up the first
and last syllables of a word. Um, Spanish has uh
here gonza. Oh nice. I guess that's how you pronounce it,
which where you double the vowels and put a P
between them. So gato, which is cat is gaba topo
(11:27):
sounds kind of cool? It does you take Japan? Okay?
Japan has something I was asking you me about this.
She knew exactly what I was talking about. Um called
bobby go b A b I g o, and g
O indicates a language in Japan, So like English go
or something like that would be the English language. This
is like bubba language. And it's because you insert be
(11:49):
sounding syllables into the already extant syllables of a word.
So sushi becomes subu shibi. I love that word. Yeah,
subushi bi subushibi. Yeah, and that's bobbigo in Japan. Let's
go get some superb I just think it's so great
that everybody's like this language interest is interesting, but we
could make it even even better. Let's try kids, Yeah, kids,
(12:11):
are great. Uh, well, you got anything else? I got
nothing else. I don't either so or we go or
stay off or shay off, stay to a that's that
(12:34):
all right. Stuff you should know is a production of
iHeart Radios How Stuff Works. For more podcasts my heart Radio,
visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
listen to your favorite shows.
Hey, and welcome to the Short Stuff. I'm Josh. There's
Chuck and Dave and Jerry are both here in spirit
and this is short stuff. I'm sorry this is or
shay off stay. I had a hard time with this
episode research wise, because, uh, this how stuff works article
(00:26):
keeps talking about what a joke it is and how
easy it is, and it's like, it's not the Enigma code.
But I didn't do pig Latin growing up, so it's
just still confuses me. Like I get it, but I like,
I don't just hear someone speak it and I can say, oh,
this is what they're saying, and I have to write
it down and move a bunch of dumb letters around,
right right, yeah, you, I'm right there with you, Like
(00:48):
I have to stop and think about it. You know,
how to say a certain word or spell it or
what somebody's saying is very difficult too. But I think
that's kind of because pig Latin it wasn't like the
cool thing when we were growing up. Where were younger,
we probably or I should say way way older, we
probably um would have been a little better at pig Latin.
It's just it is very easy to learn the rules
(01:09):
of it are very easy, but to speak it fluently
would be, I'm sure very difficult and take a lot
of practice, for sure. Yeah, and there are so many
more things that you can do with your time. They're
more constructed to try and be fluent in pig Latin.
But when you're a little kid and the only the
only thing to play with is a hoop with a
(01:30):
stick that you chased down the hill, pig Latin is
pretty attractive, you know what I mean. Yeah, so pig
Latin is uh we'll talk a little bit about the
history in a sec but basically, if you take the
word cat and we got this from the House to
Works article at way is way big pay at and
lee what is pig Latin? And see that annoys me
just reading it? Uh, so what you do with cat
(01:52):
it would end up as at k. So you take
the letter at the beginning of the word, move it
to the end, add the syllable a y and that's
sort of it, right that, I mean that that is
all there is to it. So you'd have at k
that's pretty simple. At k um and that's it. I mean,
(02:13):
that's all there there really is to it. Like if
you run into a word that has a couple of syllables. Um.
They use the example of curtain. Um. There's a couple
of things you can do. You can say artn k,
That's what I would do. But if you're if you
were like fluent in pig Latin, you might say no,
no no. Each syllable gets messed around with this, so
(02:34):
you have um er k tin a no er k k,
which I mean like almost no one's going to know
what you're talking about, especially at first. But if you
and your buddy are really good at pig Latin, then
you've got your own little language that no one can
can come in too. And in your world is is
(02:54):
shatter proof. That's right. And uh. There were some predecessors
two pig Latin, dog Latin, and hog Latin, which they think, um,
the name hog Latin might have eventually gotten to pig Latin,
even though dog Latin and hog Latin were not anything
like pig Latin. Um. Apparently it was just like a
(03:16):
fake Latin that people made up. Like Shakespeare. I think
it did a little. Uh, I think dog Latin and
it's funny. They really explained the Shakespeare passage, which I
don't even think we should get into but no, no, no,
you co starred. I'll be Holofernes. All right, jeez, everyone,
(03:37):
we present to a dramatic reading from Shakespeare's Loves Labor Lost.
Oh I'm co co starring, yea, your co star man,
this is where our TV show didn't work. Oh wait,
I'm chuck alright, co starred. Go to thou hast it
(03:58):
add dung hill at fingers ends as they say, oh,
smell false latin dunghill for and then okay, we can't
go over that again. So this article takes great paints
(04:19):
to explains, to explain all that, and then at the
very end says, the joke is much funnier when you
explain it at links, and I'm like, no, that's never
been true for any joke ever. Right, well so, but
the point is is like what Shakespeare was calling this
dog latt or hog Latin or dog Latin is basically
more like Cockney rhyming slang than what we think of
as pig Latin. He was replacing dunghill for ungium, which
(04:43):
is fingernail, which was right, pretty clever words smithery, right,
and it's funny, like it's pretty rich. The two of
us just mocking Shakespeare right now, but but that that
this was like, not, it has nothing to do with
pig Latin, even though they're like clear, Really, hog Latin
was a direct predecessor of pig Latin, even even if
(05:04):
they aren't similar. Somebody said, oh, we'll call this one
pig Latin rather than hog Latin. Yeah, and I think
even Edgar Allan Poe mentioned both dog and pig Latin.
I'm sorry, dog Latin and pig Greek. Uh. And it
was pretty disparaging of those. But again, it was not
the pig Latin that we know. And maybe we should
take a break and talk about when that dumb thing
(05:26):
came around right after this ko way, chuck okay, chuck um.
(06:02):
So pig Latin, as we understand, it was around by um,
the late eighteen hundreds at the latest. They think, Yeah,
there was I think in the Ox. It was in
the Atlantic. Rather, it says they all spoke a queer
jargon which they themselves had invented. It was something like
the well known pig Latin that all sorts of children
(06:24):
like to play with. Uh. And it looks like it
was invented by kids to talk about stuff that their
parents couldn't understand. That totally makes sense. Um. And again
here's where that famous Enigma code line comes in. That
like the parents could could crack it pretty easily. Um.
The point was, I think maybe that it became cute
(06:47):
and just widely appreciated because maybe this is my own
personal theory, kids thought that they were speaking in a
way their parents couldn't understand, and their parents did fully understand,
so they allowed it to keep going on. Is like
the gret language, um with with this kind of like
little bit of you know, delight at the childhood nous
of the whole thing. That's what I think. That's why
(07:09):
I think pig Latin got traction originally. Yeah, And it's
it's kind of weird that I have such contempt for
it because I've seen examples in movies and in real
life where and it's usually seems like young girls have
made up their own little secret language, and I just
find that like exhaustively adorable and very funny and cool.
(07:31):
But there's something about pig Latin that just ugs baby me.
Oh good, one good one chuck, that was very good. Yeah.
So um, one of the things that I love about
pig Latin are twofold and they both come in the
early twentieth century. So pig Latin basically had its golden age,
It's heyday where it was like part of the popular
culture and like the first uh three or four decades
(07:54):
of the twentieth century. And um, it showed up Chuck
in this this this song called pig Latin Love, which
was an Arthur Fields record from and did you listen
to it? Of course it's adorable. I looked, I looked
everywhere to see if it's in the public domain, and
couldn't find it. So I'm not sure if we can
(08:15):
play anything. It's got to be I would think so too.
So we'll say, let's play a little bit here, and
then if do you don't hear anything, it means that
we found out it is in the public domain, in
which case go look it up yourself. But here's a
little clip of pig Latin Love by Arthur Fields. Maybe correctly. Goodness,
it really is. And so I just think it's an adorable,
(08:36):
adorable song. But the fact that somebody had a popular
song about this shows just how popular it was at
the time, how how prevalent it was in pig almost
in pig culture. And pop culture. I'm sure in pig
culture they're like, stop making fun of us. We don't
talk like that. Yeah, we used to have an old
patrola with some old records, and uh it was it
(08:56):
was always kind of fun to um to put those on.
Like we never did it as a family, like sat
around and listen to him, but when friends would come
over at papan on, it's kind of kind of cool.
My dad had um Jackie Gleason records, and uh, I
used to tell them that they were so square, the
records themselves were square. He would be like, what do
(09:17):
you mean that's great? Uh So the other use, I
think you were probably talking about The Three Stooges, right, Yeah,
did you watch that too? I didn't, Actually, I didn't
get around to that one. It's just adorable. I can't
wait to do our episodes on the Three Stooges or
five episode, seven part episodes on the Three Stooges. But
there's a particular one in UM ninety eight called Tassels
(09:41):
in the Air where Mo and Larry are trying to
teach Curly pig Land. It's a good like full minute
or so like lesson on pig Land. Curly just can't
quite pick up. But so he's like, so I'm oh
may and that's airy lay and you're early and curly
(10:01):
goes que and they're like no, I think he gets
slapped as a result. But um, it's it's pretty cute.
So here's the deal, though, pig Latin is not I mean,
technically it's a language, but it's it's really um something
called back slang or a coded language. Um, it's not
like I know, we covered Esperanto many many years ago
(10:22):
on the show and uh like kling on. Those are
really invented languages with vocabulary and grammar and syntax, and
they don't rely on English as the basis of it.
This is not that. No, there's no pig Latin without English.
That's it. And it follows all of the same vocabulary
rules and like you said, syntax and everything that English follows.
(10:43):
It's just you're rearranging it a little bit. Um. One
of the other categories that pig Latin qualifies as a
coded language, Like the reason that this is done is
to disguise what you're saying. Even if it is not
just kind of a feeble attempt at disguise, it's still
qualifies it as a coded language. Yeah, and there are
examples of stuff like this in other countries. Apparently in
(11:06):
France there's something called verlon that switches up the first
and last syllables of a word. Um, Spanish has uh
here gonza. Oh nice. I guess that's how you pronounce it,
which where you double the vowels and put a P
between them. So gato, which is cat is gaba topo
(11:27):
sounds kind of cool? It does you take Japan? Okay?
Japan has something I was asking you me about this.
She knew exactly what I was talking about. Um called
bobby go b A b I g o, and g
O indicates a language in Japan, So like English go
or something like that would be the English language. This
is like bubba language. And it's because you insert be
(11:49):
sounding syllables into the already extant syllables of a word.
So sushi becomes subu shibi. I love that word. Yeah,
subushi bi subushibi. Yeah, and that's bobbigo in Japan. Let's
go get some superb I just think it's so great
that everybody's like this language interest is interesting, but we
could make it even even better. Let's try kids, Yeah, kids,
(12:11):
are great. Uh, well, you got anything else? I got
nothing else. I don't either so or we go or
stay off or shay off, stay to a that's that
(12:34):
all right. Stuff you should know is a production of
iHeart Radios How Stuff Works. For more podcasts my heart Radio,
visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
listen to your favorite shows.
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