Double Talk

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, my name’s Eddie Renner. I’m calling from Petoskey, Michigan.

Petoskey.

Well, welcome to the program, Eddie. How can we help?

Well, I was going to call about a language that my mom taught me when I was very young called double talk.

Double talk.

-huh. Okay.

And it’s where you insert the letters I and B before every syllable.

Oh, okay.

To alter the word.

How does that sound?

Well, for example, Grant Barrett would be Grybant by Barabit.

Grybant by Barabit.

I want more.

Nice.

What about Martha Barnette?

My Barthabob by Barnabit.

So if you’re saying A Way with Words is hosted by Grant Barrett and Martha Barnette.

You’d say,

I bought why they, why best my birds, I both to bid by Bar, by by Grybant by Barabit, I ban my Barthabob by Barnabit.

Now, wait a minute.

Now, wait a minute.

Are you playing the tape backwards?

That’s what it sounds like.

There’s a few simple rules to it.

You put an IB before every syllable.

Let’s use a simple word like cat.

Cat starts with a C, which is a consonant, so you’d put the IB after the C.

If it’s like ash, you’d put the IB before the A, before a vowel.

So cat would become kybat, ash would be ibash.

Wow.

And Eddie, you learned this from your mother?

My mother, who grew up in the 50s, early 60s.

She was born in 51.

And she taught it to my sister at a very young age,

So we can both speak it as if it was just second nature.

Really?

And my sister since has taught it to her kids who are now in their early teens,

And they can also speak it fluently.

My goodness, that must come in handy.

It actually does.

If you’re ever in a situation in public where you have to say something

That you don’t want anybody eavesdropping on.

We’ve done this all the time where we can just say something back and forth to each other.

Oh, my gosh.

That’s pretty cool.

And from whom did your mother learn it?

From her girlfriends.

Okay.

So it was a thing being passed among teenagers in the 50s?

Right, right.

Okay.

I don’t know how you do it.

But the understanding of it might be the hardest part, right?

Right, right.

However, I know I’ve had friends in the past who, for some reason, however, perhaps how their brains are wired,

They can’t speak it right away, but right from the very beginning, they can just hear the words inside.

And they’re able to understand it pretty easily.

But speaking it’s much more difficult.

So this is a double talk. I guess it’s a kind of pig Latin.

It’s not the pig Latin, which most people in the United States know.

Do you know any others of these?

Well, I did do some initial research from Google, and apparently there’s an entry called Ubi Dabi.

And it shows that there’s a lot of variations of different, you know, they don’t just put the IB.

They put IZ or some of them.

I can’t remember what they were exactly.

There’s a whole slew of them, and they’re not just in English.

They’re in languages all around the world.

But there wasn’t a lot of information on exactly where it comes from or how old it is.

Oh, that’s a good question.

Well, we do know it’s at least a couple hundred years old because a lot of times it appears in the language of criminals.

So it’s recorded in some of the early reports of, say, marketplace criminals in the U.K., or what is now the U.K.

And so there’s just a few records of that.

As far as the other countries go, a lot of times it appears in the language of children because it’s a part of creating identity and close social cohesion.

You know, people use it to say, well, if you know my little, my double talk, then you must be a friend of mine somehow.

We must be part of the same circle.

Yeah, and I’m thinking we’ve had children and criminals with us since time immemorial.

I’m betting it goes back to antiquity.

I wouldn’t be surprised.

But it’s not necessarily the kind of thing that you would find written records of.

No, it isn’t.

It’s hard to find.

It starts to appear when people really start to pay attention to language.

So by the time the Brothers Grimm in Germany start paying attention, like real academic attention to language,

Then you start to get people making these word lists and really listening to the speech of other people.

So, yeah, it probably goes back to the first language ever.

Because, hey, frankly, humans love to toy with language.

I know I say this on the show all the time, but a lot of the stuff that we do did not start with a purpose.

It was done first as a goof, and then people developed a purpose for it.

Right.

So it sounds cool.

So I can just imagine you guys in the supermarket in the Piggly Wiggly or wherever.

How do you say Piggly Wiggly?

Piediglebby, webiglebby.

Eddie, you are fabulous.

That’s awesome.

Thanks for sharing with everybody.

You’re welcome.

Thank you.

Really appreciate it.

Bye-bye.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

Hey, you know what?

I know Eddie can’t be the only one with this kind of double talker pig Latin in his family.

You’ve got something that’s a little different that the rest of us haven’t heard?

Give us a call.

Drop three minutes of that in our voicemail, 877-929-9673.

And then tell us what you said.

Yeah, definitely.

Or tell us about it in an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Thank you.