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Is any term identified, among linguists, for an effect by which some speech or text has no meaning, and yet superficially resembles, by following certain patterns, speech or text from a particular language or language group?

The following are examples to illustrate the concept:

  1. Consider the following meaningless text:

    Furgle blunkers manergatation

    Assuming that the text was written with an intention to follow English orthographic patterns, you probably can infer an intended pronunciation, even though you recognize no word from those you have learned.

    Imagine trying to teach someone to reproduce the speech and text from memory. One might speculate that such a task is much easier in the case that a person is familiar with English, compared to the case that a person has had no exposure, because of the superficial resemblance between the phonetic and orthographic structure of the sample and that of speech or text understood as English.

  2. A comedy sketch, performed by American comedians Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele, attempts to lampoon how an English speaker might experience speech of the French language. The humor of the sketch depends on a gimmick, by which the audience hears speech that some incorrectly may believe is understood as French.

    (The illusion is enhanced by the early inclusion of the widely-recognized French expressions merci beaucoup and très bien.)

  3. Italian singer Adriano Celentano, in 1972, released Prisencolinensinainciusol, a song explained as "intended to sound to its Italian audience as if it is sung in English spoken with an American accent, vaguely reminiscent of Bob Dylan; however, the lyrics are deliberately unintelligible gibberish with the exception of the words 'all right'."

    (A dance performance of the musical piece, in collaboration with Italian dancer Raffaella Carrà, additionally parodies visual features of certain American performing styles.)

    (Thank you to user @livresque for providing this additional example.)

brainchild
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    The closest thing I can think of is glossolalia. – Peter Olson Jul 26 '20 at 06:48
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    There’s a similar short film (very short, like a minute or two I think) that does the same in English. Made by some Australians, I think. A young couple having some sort of argument/emotional scene over dinner – all seems like you understand them because it sounds exactly like Broadcast American, but it’s actually gibberish. Can’t remember what it’s called though. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Jul 26 '20 at 08:56
  • In Surely You're Joking, Mr Feynman he talks about his talent for doing this in particular languages. I don't know a name for it, though. – Colin Fine Jul 26 '20 at 12:11
  • Prisencolinensinainciusol by Adriano Celentano in Italian and The Universal Language by David Ives both come to mind. Are these just false cognates? – livresque Jul 28 '20 at 22:43
  • @livresque: Thank you for the reference to Prisencolinensinainciusol. It is an appropriate example, and I have integrated it into the question. – brainchild Jul 29 '20 at 07:12
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    "Godël, Escherman and Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid" has some beautiful renditions of "Jabberwocky", a poem of half-gibberishin (some of which has since been integrated to the Lexicon) in German. Ebyan Álvarez has "translated" it well to Spanish, too. Ah, a list of translations is available! – Conrado Aug 03 '20 at 03:33
  • @PeterOlson you should make "glossolalia" an answer--there's a similar question on ELU with some good answers. – Conrado Aug 03 '20 at 14:41
  • @Conrado I thought of that in a staircase mind, the translations of "Jabberwocky" and how appropriate that this is asking the ?opposite of portmanteau. – livresque Aug 10 '20 at 07:26
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    Jabberwocky employs fictional words, much the same as fantasy and science-fiction literature, but is undeniably a work of writing in the English language, as directly evidenced by the possibility of translation into German or any other real language, as well as the by the reader's ability to follow an essential story line. It is an interesting example, but perhaps distinct from the framing of the current question. – brainchild Aug 17 '20 at 09:35
  • @PeterOlson After having absorbed a bit more information, I have reconsidered my position on Glossolalia. Now I think that it is not the ideal answer, because it is the term applied to the event at Pentecost described in Acts 2. An integral part of that story is that the people who heard the "other tongues" (glossolalia) understood them, while OP's question includes "meaningless". – Conrado Aug 17 '20 at 14:15
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    @Conrado: The relevant consideration for whether glossolalia is an applicable term is the understanding linguists give to it, not the original source text from which the term is borrowed. The linguistics usage of the term entails spontaneous vocalization that lacks any clear intention known the speaker. This activity contrasts against the kind described in the question, a systematic and deliberate process of mimicking features of a particular, actual, natural language. – brainchild Aug 18 '20 at 09:18
  • I've always heard it called doubletalk. The late Prof. Irwin Corey -- "The World's Foremost Authority" -- was a master of this genre. – jlawler Sep 04 '20 at 22:10

3 Answers3

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Grammelot (or gromalot or galimatias) /ˈɡrɒməlɒt/ is an imitation of language used in satirical theatre, an ad hoc gibberish that uses prosody along with macaronic and onomatopoeic elements to convey emotional and other meaning, and used in association with mime and mimicry.

A romance grammelot (sometimes dubbed "Cirquish") is famously used by Cirque du Soleil, e.g. Pearl.

iacobo
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    Great find! ... +1 – Sir Cornflakes Sep 04 '20 at 10:44
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    Does the term represent an instance of an imitation of some particular target language, or only language generally? (An important feature of the Key & Peele and Celentano examples is that an observer with familiarity but not understanding of the target language might make the inaccurate inference that the speech is authentic.) – brainchild Sep 05 '20 at 11:27
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I only know a term from typography for that thing, it is greeking. In typography greeking is used to demonstrate layout and fonts without distracting the judges by the contents of the text. Maybe, it's this word you remember.

Sir Cornflakes
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I don't know what the technical terms in linguistics would be, but the phenomenon you describe has several possible variations and there are a set of denominations for it.

Apparently each language has its own word for it.

Pig Latin (taken from wikipedia):

Early mentions of pig Latin or hog Latin describe what we would today call dog Latin, a type of parody Latin.[citation needed] Examples of this predate even Shakespeare, whose 1598 play, Love's Labour's Lost, includes a reference to dog Latin:2

Costard: Go to; thou hast it ad dungill, at the fingers' ends, as they say. Holofernes: O, I smell false Latine; dunghill for unguem. — Love's Labour's Lost, William Shakespeare

bad_coder
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  • @epl from the OP "and yet superficially resembles, by following certain patterns, speech or text from a particular language or language group?" – bad_coder Jul 27 '20 at 23:59
  • "Has no meaning" means without any possibility of being a method of communication. – brainchild Jul 28 '20 at 00:03