idioglossia
noun

- a private language, as invented by a child or between two children, esp twins

- a pathological condition in which a person's speech is so severely distorted that it is unintelligible

Collins Dictionary

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WORD ORIGIN

An idioglossia (from the Ancient Greek ἴδιος ídios, "own, personal, distinct" and γλῶσσα glôssa, "tongue") is an idiosyncratic language invented and spoken by only one or two people.

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SECRET TONGUES

Fascinating facts about secret languages:

- “Utopian”, the earliest known fictional language, was created by Thomas More in his 1516 book Utopia.

- Examples of secret languages used by subcultures include Cockney rhyming slang, CB slang, Verlan, the Grypsera of Polish prisons, thieves' cant, and Polari. Verlan is a type of argot (secret language) in France, where words are spoken with their syllables reversed.

- Secret codes and ciphers have been used since ancient times, with examples found in Egyptian scrolls dating back to around 1900 BC. The ATBASH cipher, a reversed-alphabet substitution cipher, was developed by Hebrew scribes in 500-600 BC.

- Some fictional languages like Klingon, Elvish, and Dothraki have been developed extensively with full lexicons and grammar. The Dothraki language from Game of Thrones has around 4,000 functional words. The Klingon language from Star Trek, with around 5,000 words, was created by Marc Okrand, a linguistics professor at the University of California.

- Conlangs like Esperanto and Lojban have been created as international auxiliary languages, with the goal of being easy to learn and use.

- Swardspeak, also known as Bekimon or Bekinese, is a secret language used by the LGBTQ+ community in the Philippines.

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SYNONYMS

alien tongue, arcane speech, argot, babble, baffling babble (parlance), blather, cant, code, cryptic idiom (utterance),  esoteric speech, garbled verbiage, gibber, gibberish, gypsy tongue, gobbledygook, IDIOGLOSSIA, impenetrable/indecipherable/invented (language, patter, tongue), jargon, jibber-jabber, kauderwelsch, lingo, local parlance, mishmash, mumbo jumbo, newspeak, patois, personal parlance, play on words, private/secret code (language), queer tongue, strange lingo, trade jargon, tribal speech, vernacular

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SMUGGLE OWAD into a conversation today, say something like:

“With the rise of AGI and omnipresent surveillance, IDIOGLOSSIA could be one way of protecting our private messaging.”

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