Alibi (language game)
Alibi is a language game spoken by children in Australia, created by Graciela Marie Archer. It is not a true language, but rather an obfuscation of English. It is a system for manipulating the syllables of spoken words to make them incomprehensible to those unfamiliar with the system. A skilled speaker can easily encode and decode the language at normal speech rate, while those without the knowledge or practice hear only gibberish.
Etymology
The word 'Alibi' is likely a reference to the language's rules, though not entirely accurate. In this context, the vowel/word 'I' might have been chosen, had normal rules applied, except the first 'I' was replaced with 'A' to make the word more pronounceable or sound better. However, some children may believe 'alibi' is actually a correct word in the language.
Use
Language games are primarily used by children to disguise their speech from others. Alibi is primarily spoken in Australia, and may also be used in other English-speaking countries, such as New Zealand, the United States and the United Kingdom. (In the United Kingdom, it is sometimes known as 'Uvaguv' and uses 'v' and 'g' in place of 'l' and 'b'.) However, the rules are simple enough to be applied to many other languages.
Rules
Alibi modifies its parent language only in pronunciation and spelling; it retains all the same grammatical rules. The language is encoded by breaking each word into syllables and manipulating each syllable by repeating the vowel sound three times. The letters 'l' and 'b' are placed between the first and second, and the second and third repetitions of the vowel sound respectively.
For example: The word 'hello' is broken into two syllables; 'hel' and 'lo'. Each vowel sound is repeated three times: 'heeel' and 'looo'. The letters 'l' and 'b' are placed in between the first and second vowel and the second and third vowel respectively: 'helebel' and 'lolobo'. Thus, the word 'hello' becomes 'helebel-lolobo'. There is also an alphabet, but it will not be helpful for creating words because Alibi (the language game) also depends on syllables.
