Wednesday, August 19

Mixing it up

“Stop it! I can’t stand that stuff!” complained one of our clients at our typography shop in Los Angeles oh so long ago. He was talking about Karla and my use of upside-down and backward language. “Kathy and two of my daughters do that all the time,” he continued, “and it drives me crazy.”

So what’s the complaint? This: Yow haroo? instead of how are you? Belly haybo instead of hello baby. Doog doof is for good food, Sometimes whole long phrases came along. Here’s one: “Who knows what ervil leaks in the mets of harn.” That was the opening line of an old radio show, The Shadow. Translated: Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men.

Variations on the theme include intentional mispronunciation. Or running words together and trying other ways to say them. One of our frequent shopping places is The Home Depot. We just as often pronounce it Ho-medda-put.


I could go on, but I hear neighing outside and we have to go hoard the feces.

1 comment:

Avis said...

That's quite the talent you've got there! The closest we come to it is calling certain family members Pate and Natty and that's not very close.