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You are here: Home / Language / Where does the expression “Dog Latin” come from and What does Dog Latin mean?

Where does the expression “Dog Latin” come from and What does Dog Latin mean?

April 20, 2020 by Karen Hill

Properly, “Dog Latin” is just very bad Latin, a mongrel Latin, whence the name, composed of a mixture of Latin and English.

But in our own childhood, what we called dog Latin was a gibberish of decapitated English words, the initial letters transposed to the rear, plus “ay”; as, “Ohnny-jay ust-may o-gay ome-hay.”

In other areas this form of lopped English was called “hog Latin,” or “pig Latin,” possibly because the sound resembled the grunting of hogs.

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Filed Under: Language

About Karen Hill

Karen Hill is a freelance writer, editor, and columnist. Born in New York, her work has appeared in the Examiner, Yahoo News, Buzzfeed, among others.

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