Language game

A language game is a concept developed by Ludwig Wittgenstein at the beginning of his book Philosophical Investigations. A language game is a simple language, combined with a context that shows what to do with the language. One example he gives is a language for building, containing two words, 'slab' and 'brick'. When A says 'slab' to B, B finds a slab and gives it to A; likewise, when A says 'brick' to B, B finds a brick and gives it to A. Language games are also known as play languages or ludlings.

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In another sense, language games are not technically artificial languages so much as heuristics for altering language, like a code. They are used primarily by groups attempting to conceal their conversations from others. Most common examples are: Pig latin, which is used all over the globe; the Gibberish family, prevalent mainly in the USA and Hungary, and Verlan in France. Each of these "languages games" involves a usually simple standard transformation to speech, thus encoding it. The languages can be easily decoded by a skilled speaker, who swaps or removes the necessary letters or syllables.

A common difficulty with language games is that they are usually passed down orally. While written translations can be made, they are often imperfect, and thus spelling can vary widely. Some factions argue that words in these spoken tongues should simply be written the way they are pronounced, while others insist that the purity of language demands that the transformation remain visible when the words are imparted to paper. Contrary to what proponents of either side may tell you, there is no one definitive written lexicon for language games, but it is rather a matter of dialect.

Common language games

Host Language	Game Name	Basic Rules	Notes
Dutch		reversed elements & words	mercantile code
English (etc.)	Pig latin	first consonant to end +ay
English	bicycle	schwa ess after all consonants
English	Cockney rhyming slang	canonical rhyming word pairs; speakers often drop the second word of common pairs	trouble & strife = wife
English	eggegg langeggwagegg	apparently, insert "egg" after each syllable
English	gibberish	insert "itherg" before the first vowel in a syllable	Gibberish is also a family of related language games.
English	Ubbi dubbi	insert "ub" before the first vowel in a syllable	PBS show Zoom; part of the gibberish family
English	yardle bardle
English	zambuda
Farsi	zabon-e-zargari
French	Louchebem	initial consonant to end, +var. suffixes, prepend "L"
French	Verlan	Simple transformations and slang from Arabic
German		"lav" inserted after some vowel sounds
Hungarian		repeat vowel add "v"	Hungarian counterpart of Ubbi dubbi
Indonesian	Prokem	Includes simple transformations of different types, acronyms and ordinary slang	A bibliography of references pertaining to Prokem and other Indonesian-Malaysian language games: [1]
Italian	Latino Maccheronico
Japanese	Ba-bi-bu-be-bo
Mandarin	Fanquie
Portuguese	Sima
Portuguese	Linga do Pe
Russian	Fufajskij yazyk
Russian	porosyachia latin
Spanish		"f" added to certain syllables
Spanish	Geringoso	"p" + last vowel added to every syllable	Gato = Gapatopo
Swedish	Allspråket	first consonant to end +all
Swedish	Isprikit	all vowels changed to i
Swedish	Rövarspråket	consonants are changed to "consonant o consonant"