= Tiger Woods is awesome, and other helpful phrases from the Yindii Guide to American Slang

 

"Down with the 'hood.'" Ebonics-Japanese phrasebook for sale.

 

The strange language spoken by circus owner Papa Lazarou, from the British dark comedy series The League of Gentlemen, may technically be gibberish ("Autom, sprow. Cana, tik bana! Sandwol, but no sera smee?") But it was inspired by Parlari, the private language of traveling British circus folk.

 

Pioneering West African composer Julien Jacob sings in his own mysterious, imaginary language, allowing his listeners to interpret his songs in their own way.

What’s the new word for "cool"? Wicked? Slammin’? Shiny? Wack? Fetch?

 

More from AskMefi: I'm 6'8". People are always asking me how tall I am. Instead of telling the truth, what are some witty, non-confrontational responses I might use? "Depends on where you start measuring."

Vesona is a universal language proposed by Dr. Alesha Sivartha, in which the first two or three letters of any word give the general meaning and the added letters specialize these meanings. An elaborate circular diagram (copy and paste link in new window) shows how Vesona encapsulates all of human knowledge.

 

Verdurian is a language spoken by 55 million imaginary people. The fruitful creativity of Mark Rosenfelder offers background on the history, grammar, and literature of Verdurian, as well as a Language Kit for constructing your own artificial languages.

 

How to say How many flowers are in Pia Zadora's vase? in Esperanto? From Prolific Lo-Fi recording artist Ken Clinger, who records songs in both English & Esperanto.  He juxtaposes awkward practice sentences from foreign language tutorials, creating absurd, surreal alternate realities.

 

Could a computer language be designed today that would last one hundred years?

The politically incorrect alphabet.

Why English is a Silly Language.  "It's really a wonder that any one manages to successfully speak English at all. That people learn it all over the world is just incredible... I mean amazing."
 

The Elements of Style.
 

Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius. Jorge Luis Borges dreamed of a language called Ursprache with absolutely no nouns. For example, there's no word for "moon," but there's a verb meaning "to moon" or "to moonate." The sentence "The moon rose above the water" in Ursprache would translate as "Upward behind the onstreaming it mooned."

 

The hypothetical lost continent of Mu (also known as Lemuria) is said to have been destroyed in a global upheaval tens of thousands of years ago. Unorthodox researcher Col. James Churchward believed he rediscovered Mu's alphabet, comprised of beautiful and intricate glyphs.