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Tuesday, July 26, 2005
Pig Latin and grammar
 
Here's a question for all you linguists out there. We start out with a phrase in English. We want to translate into Pig Latin by chopping off the first letter if its a consonant and appending it and the suffix -ay to the end of the word, or just adding -way at the end if it starts with a vowel. This is all fine and good for translating whole senctences, as the grammar works itself out in most ways.

The question I have is for those circumstances when a single word is being obfuscated through the use of Pig Latin. What effect should the modification of this word have on the rest of the sentence or phrase. For example, lets say your dog jumps up and yips every time you say the word 'walk'. If you were to be talking to someone, intending to say 'Let's go for a walk', but just wanted to change the last word so as to not get the dog excited, how does the rest of the sentence get effected by it. Would it be 'Let's go for a alk-way' or 'Let's go for an alk-way'

My guess is that people would speak it the first way, as the intention to change the word in normal conversation wouldn't be thought of until the last second, too late to change the previous word. However, if it's written I'm wondering which way would be correct. Not that there is any real 'correct' way to write pig latin, but I'm just curious. These are the sort of things that I take time to think about. Real quandaries!


Comments:

You clearly need a job to occupy your mind and time!!!

Love, Dad
 
Listen to your father...

but seriously i said that sentence in my head before i got to the an or a question and my brain automatically changed it to an an...maybe I'm just weird...

also it feels awkward to say a alk-way
 
Heya dude,

You know I had considered this very same quandry when using double dutch! I came to the conclusion that should someone actually pick up your awkward "a" ... you could just turn around and run!

I'm very sad to say that my blog had died but in it's place a new one has been created: kieryns.blogspot.com *hurruh*
 
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