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.

Language rules

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

Example: Mary had a little lamb becomes Mumarugyub hutchadud a lulisquatutlule 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 (period) is 'Per', a question mark is 'Que' ('Kway' or 'Kay', varies), and a comma is 'Com'.

History

This game appears to have been invented and used by black slaves in the American south, to teach spelling and conceal what they said, at a time when literacy among slaves was forbidden^[1]

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

• Gibberish (language game)
• Pig Latin
• Leet
• Verlan
• Rövarspråket

References