Throughout history, people have created secret languages to bond with their group, prevent outsiders from understanding, and protect themselves. Some examples include Nushu, a secret language created by women in China, and Hijra Farsi spoken by India's hijra community. These languages often had words for concepts unique to the group or rules for changing words to make them secret. Many language games also operate by rules that substitute or change sounds and syllables in words to encode messages.

3. Throughout the world and
throughout history, people have invented
secret languages and language games.
They have used these special languages
as a means of identifying with their
group, to prevent outsiders from knowing
what is being said, and/or for protection
or self-preservation.

4. Some examples of Secret Languages
A. Nushu
B. Hijra Farsi

5. -the Chinese women’s secret
A. Nushu
language years ago
- originated in the third century as
a means for women to communicate with one
another in the sexually repressive societies of
imperial China
-exclusively created and used by
the women in Jiangyong Prefecture, Hunan
Province, China

7. The songs or written Nushu speaks
about the pains and worries of women
like the sorrow of parting, when one
sworn sister is going to get married, or
songs about anti-Japanese because of
war at that time. The transmitters of
Nushu are from 20 to 70 years old.

8. B. Hijra Farsi
-spoken and privately used by hijras
(hijra is a marginalized community that
lives in sequestered groups in many
cities of India and Pakistan)
-was created to serve as a survival
mechanism for Hijras during the British
Raj.

9. Example:
“Kaɽe kaɽɑ ho”
- “Keep quiet” ; “shut up”
- used usually by some senior hijra for a
junior one to stop them from doing
anything wrong or revealing any of their
secrets to the outsiders
- this imperative sentence also seems to
have played its vital role of keeping Farsi
hidden from the world
-they use many such sentences, sotto
voce (Muhammad Sheeraz, 2011)

10. Here are some words from the Hijra lexicon
on footwear and garments:

11. Urdu, Punjabi and Siraiki languages
have no separate words to refer to the
clothes of men and women but Farsi
does have firka and kotki. This seems to
be so because unlike the men and
women of the area who wear only one
type of dress specifically designed for
them, male and female hijras wear both
types. So they are more in need of
separate words for dresses than men
and women. Then the word khalki used
for shoes is masculine in Urdu but
feminine in Farsi.

12. C. Other Secret Languages
American slaves developed an
elaborate code that could not be
understood by the slave owners.
 References to “the promised
land” or the “flight of the Israelites
from Egypt” sung in spirituals were
codes for the North and the
Underground Railroad.

13.  codes or ciphers may be associated
with cryptography, from the Greek
‘kryptos’ or hidden, and ‘graphia’ or
writing. Cryptography is the study of
enciphering and encoding (on the
sending end), and deciphering and
decoding (on the receiving end)
 Code - when you substitute one word for
another word or sentence, like using a
foreign language dictionary
 Cipher- when you mix up or substitute
existing letters

14. “Meet me after school behind the gym.”
“DTTZ DT QYZTK LEIGGS WTIOFR ZIT UND.”
or
DTTZD TQYZT KLEIG GSWTI OFRZI TUNDM
(an extra dummy character “M” is added in the 5-letter group)

16. M E E T M E
Tobeo rnott obeth atist heque stion
B E H I N D
Wheth ertis noble rinth emind tosuf
T H E G Y M
ferth eslin gsand arrow sofou trage
A F T E R
ousfo rtune ortot akear msaga
S C H O O L
insta seaof troub lesan dbyop posin gendt hem?

18.  used for amusement by children and
adults
 exist in all the world’s languages and
take a wide variety of forms
 In some, a suffix is added to each word;
in others a syllable is inserted after each
vowel
 there are rhyming games and games in
which phonemes are reversed; Example,
a game in Brazil substitutes an /i/ for all
the vowels

19. A. Pig Latin
- common language game of English;
but even Pig Latin has dialects, forms
of the “language game” with different
rules

20. a. Consider the following data from three
dialects of Pig Latin, each with its own rule
applied to words beginning with vowels:

21. State the rule that accounts for the Pig Latin
forms in each dialect.
 How would you say honest, admire, and
illegal in each dialect?
 Give the phonetic transcription of the Pig
Latin forms.

22. b. In one dialect of Pig Latin, the word
strike is pronounced [arkstre], and in
another dialect it is pronounced [traIkse].
In the first dialect slot is pronounced
[atsle] and in the second dialect, it is
pronounced [latse].
 State the rules for each of these dialects
that account for these different Pig Latin
forms of the same words.
 Give the phonetic transcriptions for spot,
crisis, and scratch in both dialects.

23. B. Walbiri
- natives of central Australia
- play a language game in which the
meanings of words are distorted
- In this play language, all nouns,
verbs, pronouns, and adjectives are
replaced by semantically contrastive
words

24. Thus, the sentence :
Those men are small.

25. Actually means:
This woman is big.

26.  These language games provide
evidence for the phonemes, words,
morphemes, semantic features, and so
on that is posited by linguists for
descriptive grammars. They also illustrate
the boundless creativity of human
language and human speakers.

27. Exercises for Language
Game Rules

28. 1. Identify the undistorted form of each
sentence;
*(Fromkin, et.al. , 2014)

29. 2. A popular language game is to take a
word or (well-known) expression and
alter it by adding, subtracting, or
changing one letter, and supplying a
new (clever) definition. Read the
following examples, try to figure out the
expressions from which they are derived.
(Hint: Lots of Latin.)

30.  Cogito eggo sum- I think, therefore I am a waffle.
 Foreploy - A misrepresentation about
yourself for the purpose of
getting laid
 Veni, vipi, vici - I came, I am important, I
conquered.
 Giraffiti - Dirty words sprayed very, very
high
 Ignoranus - A person who is both stupid
and an @$$*ol3
 Rigor Morris - The cat is dead (maybe for
older students)

31.  Felix navidad Our cat has a boat.
 Veni, vidi, vice I came, I saw, I sold my
sister.
 Glibido All talk, no action
 Haste cuisine Fast French food
 L’état, c’est moo I’m bossy around here.
 Intaxication The euphoria that
accompanies a tax
refund
 Ex post fucto Lost in the mail
 Aporcalypse a disastrous shortage of
bacon

32. C. Double –Dutch

33.  Vowels are pronounced normally, but
consonants become syllables.
Example: Mumarugyub hutchadud
a lulituttutlulelulamumbub

34. D. Eggy-Peggy
 This secret language is used mostly in
England. Add “egg” before each vowel.

35. E. Gree
 Add “gree” to the end of every word.
 Example: Marygree hadgree agree
littlegree lambgree.

36. F. Na
 Add “na” to the end of every word.
 Example: Maryna hadna ana littlena
lambna.

37. G. Skimono Jive
 Add “sk” to the beginning of every word.
 Example: Skmary skhad ska sklittle
sklamb.

38. H. Gay Lingo
Gay words cannot be considered part
of secret language. However, some
terms from gay lingo resembles similar
patterns with that of the rules indicated in
the language games. These are some
examples of gay lingo:

39. a. Adding an affix
sayt + -in + (sung)
> sinayt/sinaytsunng `tiningnan'
(looked)
tanders + -um + (ever)
> tumanders/tumandersever
`tumanda‘ (to grow old)
wit + chikels
> hindi (no)

40. b. Substitution of a different consonant
phoneme/s within a word : q, k, h > j
qinit = jinit
kili-kili = jili-jili
hirap = jirap

41.  p, b > sh
maputik = mashutik
buhok = shuhok

42. 1st Consonant and Vowel > ju, bo, sho, kiyo, nyo
 anak junak
 tae boe
 takot bokot
 tao bo-o
 damot kiyomat
 tanda shonda
 asawa nyosawa
 baduy (cheap) chipangga
 ano (what) anik, anitch

43. Sources:
 Denham, K. & Lobeck, A. (2010). Linguistics for everyone, an
introduction (International Edition). USA: Rosenberg
 Flores, K. (2011). Bekimon: A fresh take on pinoy gay lingo
 Retrieved from: http://badingtionaryphoenix.blogspot.com/
 Fromkin, V. et.al. (2014). An introduction to language (10th
Edition). USA: Michael Rosenberg.
 Hipschman, R. (1995). The secret language: Cryptography.
 Retrieved from:
http://www.exploratorium.edu/ronh/secret/secret.html
 Awan, MS & Sheeraz, M. (2011). Queer but language: A
sociolinguistic study of Farsi. International Journal of Humanities
and Social Science. Vol.1, No.10; August 2011.
Retrieved from:
http://www.ijhssnet.com/journals/Vol_1_No_10_August_2011/17.p
df
 Orie, E. (2001). The world of Nushu. Japan: Bunjyo University.
Retrieved from: http://homepage3.nifty.com/nushu/
 Secret Languages/ Mystery Messages (2013) by Pearson
Education, Inc.
Retrieved from: http://www.factmonster.com/ipka/A0769354.html