By Sue and Leaf Fielding
What was your first word? It seems most babies start with Ma-Ma or Da-Da. One of my early words was Loy-Loy. I think I was trying to say 'Dolly', the grubby rag-doll I clung to - after all Mama was always busy and Dada was always away and Loy-Loy could be relied upon not to tell me off.
You will notice I've slipped that little dash, aka hyphen, in between Baby's doubletalk. Well, he goes back a very long way to our old friends the ancient Greeks who were kept busy coming up with all sorts of splendid signs and symbols which have lasted for centuries. Some we've even built upon. The hyphen is a good example. They're everywhere these days, way beyond their original parameters and the great thing about them is they're very flexible. I use them liberally.
The sublinear (_) hyphen, created by Dionysius Thrax (The Art of Grammar) in the first century BC, was originally intended to indicate where words should 'flow' together. In Classical Greek there were no spaces between words, scholars were expected to know where one finished and the next one started, as per speech, I suppose. Canyouimaginethat!
The Romans followed Thrax's system and it wasn't until the 8th century that Celtic translators came up with the idea of spaces between words. However, they didn't always get it right, so early copy editors slipped in sublinear hyphens on hand-written parchments to 'mend' the error. Neat!
The next leap forward was the appearance of the marginal hyphen, introduced, presumably, for end-of-line neatness reasons, especially with long words. Thus justification came into being - literally. When I was at school, we were taught to hyphenate between syllables but that discipline is now largely ignored by printers who will slip in a marginal hyphen wherever they fancy. Sometimes in the oddest of places. If you're reading a book with justified text, have a look. The funny things is, we're so used to reading en bloc that we've become unaware of the hyphens.
I'm happy to report that we can now use them, or not, as we think fit. Ditto with the suspenseful ellipsis... which I am also rather keen on - although I doubt the purists would approve. I enjoy breaking the rules but at least I know them which gives me leave to stray from the path-well-beaten. As Picasso said 'Learn the rules like a pro, then you can break them like an artist.'
Back to doubletalk - funny how babies are either predisposed or encouraged to 'repeat' themselves. We were stuck on the potty and told to go Wee-Wee or Pee-Pee and Poo-Poo. For heaven's sake! And if we saw a horse, we were told it was a Gee-Gee. A Moo-Moo was a cow, a Quack-Quack a duck, a Woof-Woof a dog. Where Gee-Gee came from, who knows, but moo, quack and woof are onomatopoeic so actually logical - just as well we weren't told that Yatter-Yatter was a woman. Father Christmas was a jolly fellow who went Ho-Ho or even Ho-Ho-Ho! Or Yo-Ho-Ho-Ho … if he was fond of a tipple between shifts.
As we grew up, we extended our vocabularies, but having become fond of the doubletalk, rather than use our babyhood expressions, we adopted new ones, some of which are immigrants, thereby indulging our childhood habit without looking too-too silly.
MINI-DITTIES
By Leaf
To give us a flavour:
Tintin, the goodie-goodie, didn’t poo-poo my hush-hush story of eating Berber couscous with Duran Duran, leaving in a tuc-tuc, getting a dum-dum wound from the Mau Mau, beriberi from a pawpaw in Bora Bora and ending up in Sing Sing.
Fifi, the gaga go-go lulu from Baden Baden, took off her no-no and dabbed ylang ylang between her ta-tas (very Dada) then slipped into her frou-frou ra-ra skirt with the pom-pom ready for her yo-yo cancan and the tom-tom cha-cha-cha at Wet Wet Wet’s housey-housey house…
Wet Wet Wet is Scots for a slow-moving band of rain.
And by changing a letter or two,...
ZsaZsa Gabor had eight big-wig husbands but had ding-dongs with honky-tonk players in oochie-koochie bands. There would be hush-hush, lovey-dovey, chit-chat and willy-nilly dilly-dallying in the Linger-Longer club in downtown Ruarua. (fiction of course!)
CHALLENGE
from Sue
Here are some more for you to have fun putting together! Daft as you like of course.
Shilly-Shally (Dilly-Dally's daughter)
Argy-bargy (Maggie's war)
sing-song (She'll be coming round the mountain ... singin’ “Aye Aye Yippee Yippee Aye')
hip-hop (DJing, MCing, b-boying, and graffing)
flim-flam ( Mockingbird Media)
tom-tom (for sufferers of ingraphicacy)
tittle-tattle (and prattle, so a little bird told me)
Silly-Billy (Milly Molly Mandy's boyfriend)
zig-zag (loadsa zeds)
hurdy-gurdy (ancient chordophone, usually comes with a Man)
hugger-mugger (not to be recommended!)
And we're sure you can come up with some of your own.
And as a little extra: in NOTES, a cheer-us-up poem.
DISCLAIMER: WAYS WITH WORDS is about word-play and not intended to be an educational aid. Please note we cannot take responsibility for any inaccuracies.
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I get the relevance to the post of flab flobs (thought at first it must be something to do with fat) but Dibbleys and Splange? Both interesting inventions but ... oh yes, it's about the (three little dots), isn't it? Or should I call it el-lip-sis?
Another lovely delve. Yes I can: 'Flab flobs' 'Dibbleys' and Splange all used as expletives by me. You can't say I deprive you of shear brilliance, much better than swearing....all 3 mean 'fuck all'