It was a Monday morning in Berlin, and my German class was discussing secret languages and codes. Or, rather, our teacher was trying to explain, in German, the meaning of the German word for “secret code.” The classroom, full of American students, searched for a concrete example. “Like Morse code,” someone suggested. “Like Pig Latin!” yelled another helpful student.
We all nodded our assent. Like Pig Latin! Of course. Our teacher was mystified. “Schwein?” (Schwein means “pig” in German. You’re welcome.) “Yes! Ig-pay Atin-lay!” Our German teacher, understandably, did not find this string of gibberish especially clarifying.
She asked us how, exactly, we all knew what Pig Latin was — we were all from different states, different schools. Did we learn it in school? We laughed uproariously. A federal Pig Latin class! Our laughter trailed off into confused silence. How did we all know this absurd, nonsensical linguistic code? Pig Latin was just somehow there, inexplicably pervading our collective childhood memories. How had we all been indoctrinated in this strange assortment of complicated, scrambled words?
As it turns out, Pig Latin, like so many English language idiosyncracies, finds its earliest mention in Shakespeare. In 1598, Shakespeare wrote “Love’s Labour’s Lost,” where he included the phrase “false Latine.”
Pig Latin reemerged in the American cultural psyche in the 20th century, with the first American publication of Pig Latin occurring in the form of a 1919 Columbia Records song. Arthur Fields’ song, “Pig Latin Love,” contains the subtitle, “I-yay Ove-lay Oo-yay Earie-day.” The Three Stooges mention it repeatedly in sketches. More recently, in “Who Gon’ Stop Me,” Kanye West raps the line, “That’s Pig Latin, itch-bay.”
All this is to say: Pig Latin is not a “secret” code as much as it is a thoroughly American one. Like massive portion sizes or the mania surrounding college sports, it lurks, largely unexamined, in the American consciousness. To explain the collective American knowledge of Pig Latin to someone from Germany is to be forced to question its presence in the first place.
This is an obvious observation. People do things differently in different countries. Free water in restaurants is not, as it turns out, a globally acknowledged human right. “Baggers” at grocery stores are also, it would appear, a uniquely American luxury.
The shock of it came in the form of my own unexamined cultural persona. I could have gone my whole life without thinking through the origin and history of Pig Latin. Which probably would not, admittedly, have been a huge loss, but you understand the larger significance.
So here’s to a semester of maintaining a critical distance from the practices and ideas in which we, as Americans, take part, be they important or aggressively irrelevant. You can judge for yourself which of the two categories Pig Latin falls into.
