A language game is a way of manipulating the English language such that an ear which is not familiar or is untrained on the game cannot understand it. People, who make use of language games, do so in an attempt to render their communication, with people who understand the game, incomprehensible to those who don’t.
Pig-Latin is an example of such a game. It is used all over the globe. Each language game has its rules which have to be abided to. It involves encoding speech through simple standard transformation. Language games get passed orally with written communication being not as effective. The main users of these games are children in a bid to conceal their communication to other children and adults. Some manipulated words from language games have been incorporated in normal speech. In this write up, I will discuss pig Latin, a globally popular language game. It has its own laid out rules that guide and govern, as well as make sure that it is universal. Pig Latin is a language game in English, and gets played through making alterations in different words in the English language. To come up with an English word of the pig Latin form, one takes the first constant/cluster and moves it to the end of a word and affixing an ay. For instance, omputer-cay, would be yielded from computer. The purpose and objective of the game is to hide the meaning of these words from other people who do not know the rules of the game. There lack of familiarity could be attributed to the lack of knowledge of its rules. Despite the connotation of English in pig Latin as a foreign and an absurd language, its reference to Latin is an intentional misnomer. The rules of the pig Latin are:
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For those words which start with a consonant, the consonant cluster or the initial consonant gets moved to the end of that word, with an ‘ay’ getting included or added, as the following instances show: 1.In words which begin with consonant sounds, theconsonant cluster or initial consonant gets moved to the end of the word, and "ay" added, nix → ixn-ay
o scram- amscr-ay
For those words that begin with silent consonants a vowel sounds, at the end of such word, ‘way’ gets added, though in other variants the ‘w’ gets done away with, and only ‘ay’ gets included in the word, without the one in front of it. Other times, the vowel gets moved, and it gets followed by a ‘hay.’ o another→ another-ay, another-way, nother-ahay
o about→ about-way, , bout-ahay, about-ay
For those words which have to syllables which are distinct, also referred to as compound words, each syllable or component word gets severally transcribed. For instance, birdhouse- ird-bay-ouse-hay.
Due to the varied nature of transcription, an apostrophe or a hyphen gets used in order to facilitate translation of the words to their original English form. An example is Ayspray, which is ambiguous, though ay-spray refers to “spray” while ays-pray would mean “prays.” Through the use of such a game, I portray myself as belonging to a certain group of people depending on the other people that we are communicating with. Usually this language is used by children and teenagers when they want to conceal or communicate without attracting the attention of the adults. Failure to abide by the rules causes difficulty in communication and the required message gets transmitted or passage in a bad manner. The intended image does not reach the target audience and this might lead to negative or unintended reaction to the message. Actors provide meaning to themselves, the situation and to the others through drama. Impressions get delivered according to the actor’s goals and targets through interactions. Through exchange of ideas and information significance of behavior and identity get confirmed. Through Language games one becomes god in that particular language, as on gets to know manipulation techniques. This can be attributed to the fact that most languages in the world are related in one way or the other. In fact most countries that neighbor each other have elements in their languages that are similar. People who are used to language games can easily learn foreign languages.