Mar 1 2024 - Secret Code Languages

 

There are common code languages that are considered secret languages - morse code, pigpen, phonetic alphabet, tap code, substitution ciphers, letters for numbers, American sign language. .  I wouldn't call these secret. Mostly one retrieves secret codes are fun for the kids.  That's a reflection of our times right now to ignore real topic in favour of sponsored ones.   Scroll down through the retrieval. - way down.  Secret societies, cults and other groups have always had secret language systems to communicate.  Every once in a while I bump into something like this with an innocent-seeming word.  Usually one I've made up and think would be fun, and find out how immensely wrong that is.  I went to Wikipedia's topic of secret language.  It is a reference entry and the main entry seems to be Cant - the jargon or language of a group often employed to exclude or mislead people outside the group.  That's the name for secret languages. It is interesting in itself. Then I find out there is such as thing as anti-language.  I've never heard of this - it is a language created and used by an anti-society - a small, separate community intentionally created within a larger society as an alternative to or resistance of it.  The two examples are Polish prisoners and criminals in Calcutta.  The other groups are homosexuals and teenagers.  Who would have thought that teenagers are equivalent to prisoners and criminals.  We understand homosexuals in the group as they have been viewed as criminals and potential prisoners historically in the larger society.   But for teenagers to be in the prisoner and criminal catchment group, now that's an interesting sociological idea of our times.  And then I realize it isn't new.  Think of this movie: "A Clockwork Orange is a popular example of a novel where the main character is a teenage boy who speaks an anti-language called Nadsat. This language is often referred to as an argot, but it has been argued that it is an anti-language because of the social structure it maintains through the social class of the droogs." Returning to Cant - it is used as a suffix - for example medicant - the language of the medical profession that is largely unintelligible to lay people.

Isn't this a beautiful tree - a headstone carving from the Mount Pleasant Cemetery.  I've turned it into graphic sort if image.  Maybe a celebration of life for Brian Mulroney who died yesterday.  When I look at the articles on him, the pictures show him to be a smiling, confident and outgoing person.  He laughed a lot - that had to be true for there to be so many pictures of him with a big small or a laugh.  What would the alternative be?  He was so admired and appreciated by the photographic press that these are the pictures they would submit for publication.  What a great legacy. Read more daily posts here: marilyncornwellblogspot.com Purchase works here: Fine Art America- marilyncornwell.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.ca