Tutnese

Tutnese or Double Dutch is a language game primarily used in English, although the rules can be easily modified to apply to almost any language. Tutnese is usually used by children, who use it to converse in (perceived) privacy from adults (or vice versa); by members of historically marginalized minority groups for the same reason when in the presence of authority figures such as police ("pupolulisus" or "pizolizice"); or simply for amusement and humor.

In it, vowels are pronounced normally, but each consonant is replaced with a syllable from the following table:

Letter Possible syllables Letter Possible syllables Letter Possible syllables
B Bub K Kuck S Sus
C Cash, coch L Lul T Tut
D Dud M Mum V Vuv
F Fuf, Fud N Nun W Wack, Wash
G Gug P Pub, pup X Ex, xux
H Hash, hutch Q Quack, queue Y Yub, yuck
J Jay, jug R Rug, rur Z Zub, zug

Example: Mary had a little lamb becomes Mumarugyub hutchadud a lulituttutlule lulamumbub.

Double letters in a word, rather than being repeated, are preceded by the syllable squa to indicate doubling. When the double letter begins with a vowel sound, in addition to the squa the letter name is pronounced as if it began with a T — thus OO would be spoken as squa-toh.

While spaces between words are always ignored, at least one "dialect" requires that the first syllable of the name of any given punctuation mark be spoken, thus a full stop is 'Per', a question mark is 'Que' ('Kway' or 'Kay', varies), and a comma is 'Com'.

As things spoken in Tutnese take an extremely long time to say, and their accuracy depends entirely on the spelling ability of the speaker, there is little practical application of this language game.

There is a version used in some parts of the USA called Yuckish or Yukkish, which uses more or less the same constructs.

See also