Saturday, April 2, 2011

CARPAN YARPOU RARPEAD THARPIS?

Arpif yarpou carpan, yarpou knarpow darpog larpatarpin.

I'm not exactly sure where Dog Latin came from.  I grew up hearing my older brothers speak it to each other.  Being a kid in my family, you eventually became quite fluent just by having the basics of Dog Latin explained to you and then hearing it spoken constantly by your older brothers and sisters.

Here's the key to speaking Dog Latin.  Put "arp" between the first consonant and vowel of every syllable.  If the word has only one syllable and it begins with a vowel, i.e.  "if", put the "arp" in front of the vowel.  So the word "if" becomes "arpif".  The word "I" becomes "arpI".

My brothers, sisters and I operated with the idea that our parents didn't understand Dog Latin.  If we wanted to talk about something that we didn't want our parents to know,  it was Dog Latin that we used.  Many times at the dinner table, we would carry on conversations in Dog Latin, excluding our parents.  It was our code language.

I taught Dog Latin to a few select friends.  As teenagers, we would even pass notes in school written in Dog Latin.  It took quite a bit of mental agility to put Dog Latin into written form.  A brief note could end up being almost a page.

My sister made the comment recently that my father probably understood Dog Latin, but never let on that he did.  She's probably right.  But I'm pretty sure that my mother never did.

Using the information I gave about how Dog Latin is formed, take a little time and go back to the post title and the first line to see if you can figure it out.  My sisters and brothers are banned from posting the translation.  Tharpat warpould barpe charpeatarping.

2 comments:

  1. Barput narpone arpof yarpou warpould tarpeach arpit tarpo marpe. Sarpure, aprI warpas arpa larpittarple karpid, barput starpill...

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  2. Waprell, arpit sarpeems tharpt yarpou parpicked arpit arpup arpinsparpite arpof arpus.

    ReplyDelete