At 06:17 AM 4/11/02 -0400, you wrote:
><< I read your query regarding Umpchay. This
is
> a child's secret language. It may still be in common
usage among school
> children, although not having been a school child
for some time I don't
>know for sure. >>
>
>When I was a kid, Pig Latin was a language used by
adults to speak secretly
>in front of children; that's how I've used it in my
w-i-p book, too. Am I
>alone in this interpretation?
Far be it from me to claim all variations of the Queens
English originated north of the 49th, but American Pig Latin
is in fact derived from a Canadian pattern of speech, albeit
one that was adopted by our friends to the south by changing
the spelling to "ay" and adding a small flourish of their
own, the better to claim the innovation. The results were so
gratifying that Americans employed the pattern with every
word, whereas Canadians, conservative by nature, saved the
expression "eh?" for the end of every sentence, as in
"Enough, eh?"
Kerry
------------------------------------------------------
Literary events Calendar (South Ont.) http://www.lit-electric.com
The evil men do lives after them http://www.murderoutthere.com
------------------------------------------------------
-- # To unsubscribe from the regular list, say "unsubscribe rara-avis" to # majordomo@icomm.ca. This will not work for the digest version. # The web pages for the list are at http://www.miskatonic.org/rara-avis/ .
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 11 Apr 2002 EDT