🕵️♀️ The Secret Code of Words – Children's Secret Languages 🗝️📜
🕵️♀️ A follow-up story branching from Language Chapter: The importance of the spoken language ✨ This story invites children to step into the mysterious world of secret languages—hidden pathways of meaning where ordinary words disguise themselves in playful puzzles. This story celebrates the magic of children’s secret languages — from swapping sounds in Pig Latin 🐷📜 to hiding vowelsin Eggy-Peggy. 🥚🐣 Across time and place, children have invented codes to share messages only their group understands 🤫🗝️📜 By using silly replacement words , tapping rhythms on desks, or drawing symbols only they can read. 🥁 ✏️🔠 These playful codes aren’t just games 🎯 — they are living experiments in language. They connect invisibly to other stories in this chapter — from the origins of oral language families to the way dialects form and change 🗣️🌍And invite children to invent a secret language so clever that even an adult might be stumped?💭
LANGUAGE STORIES
8/6/20252 min read
Do you ever wish you could talk in a secret code only your friends understand?
🤫 Maybe you’ve whispered “banana” 🍌 to mean “meet behind the tree” 🌳 or sharing hand signals that only your friends “gets.” This is what secret languages—special codes that hide meaning—are all about!
🛠️🗣️ Children, being inventive and creative, have made up many secret languages over time. Some are full of humor, mystery, and friendly trickery. Others are just confusing—leaving people surprised and full of wonder.
In many English-speaking places, there’s a funny little language called Pig Latin. 🐷📜 But don’t let the name fool you—no pigs involved! Around the 1800s, children in the United States began to play with words to make secret jokes. Some even say that hundreds of years ago, people made up something called Dog Latin to play tricks and pretend they were speaking real Latin—the old language once used by Romans! It sounded fancy, but it was mostly nonsense and giggles! 😄
Here’s how Pig Latin works:
You take the first sound of a word, move it to the end, and add “-ay.”
➤ “play” becomes lay-pay
➤ “school” becomes ool-schay
➤ “Can you speak Pig Latin?” → Ancay ouyay eakspay igpay atinlay?
🌊 Across the ocean in England, children invented Eggy-Peggy.🥚🐣 In this game, you add the word “egg” before every vowel sound:
➤ “cat” becomes ceggat
➤ “I am happy” becomes EggI eggam heggappy
It’s so confusing it often ends in giggles—and only those who know the trick can understand what’s being said!
🇺🇸 In the 1970s, a U.S. children’s TV show called Zoom made another playful code famous — Ubbi Dubbi 🎥. The rule is simple: add “ub” before every vowel sound.
➤ cat → cubat 🐱
➤ I am happy → UbI ubam hubappy 😊
Kids across America tried speaking in Ubbi Dubbi after seeing it on TV, and soon it became a playground craze — if you couldn’t “ub-talk,” you were left out of the fun!
🇬🇧 Back in Britain, some children (and even market traders) used Backslang 🔄 — reversing the letters or sounds in a word.
➤ school → loohcs 🏫
➤ friend → dneirf 🤝
In Victorian times, sellers even used it to talk about prices without customers knowing what they meant — proof that secret languages aren’t just for play, but for a little clever business too!
These aren’t the only ones 🔍. Some children make word-replacement codes 🗝️ — where a word like moonlight 🌙💡 might secretly mean “start running” 🏃♀️, or bluebird 🐦💙 means “time to swap hiding places.” Others use rhythms 🥁 — a tap-tap-pause-tap means “yes” ✅, while two quick taps and a pause means “no” ❌. Some even make alphabets of symbols ✏️🔠 only they can read, or send messages in invisible ink made from lemon juice 🍋📝.
These secret languages are more than just fun 🎉 — they are experiments in spoken language 🗣️🌍. Every time you twist a word, replace it, or give it a new job, you’re doing what people have done for thousands of years: playing with language.🗝️📜 But secret codes aren’t always just for fun. Some were used by real spies and soldiers during wars, but that's a story for another day! 🕶️
💭 Now I wonder… Could you invent a secret language? 🧠 Or maybe you can learn to speak Pig Latin 🐷📜, Ubbi Dubbi 🎥, or even Backslang 🔄. Perhaps you could invite others to play Guess the Message, decoding phrases written in Eggy-Peggy 🥚🐣 or your own invented code. 🤔
With Montessori joy,
Vanina 😊
