K-9 Blues

  We also have words so short that it doesn’t make sense to take away the first letter, or you can’t because there is only one letter in the whole word. And then there are times when you have a word like egg. I mean, really, what are you going to do with a word like that; on the other paw, if you have a real egg, the answer is very simple – fix Yoda some scrambled eggs.

  When a word begins with a simple vowel, don’t do anything to the word, but do add the arf sound at the end, such as when egg is pronounced as eggarf. Now, here’s where you get a chance to confuse your listeners even more as you can add warf or yarf instead. So egg can also be eggwarf or eggyarf. Mix it up. Keep them (closely related to they) guessing. Here are some examples:

  Open

  Openarf

  Openwarf

  Openyarf

  Apple

  Applearf

  Applewarf

  Appleyarf

  Action

  Actionarf

  Actionwarf

  Actionyarf

  Out

  Outarf

  Outwarf

  Outyarf

  Easy

  Easyarf

  Easywarf

  Easyyarf

  Under

  Underarf

  Underwarf

  Underyarf

  When you have silent letters, what you should do is toss away the silent letter (if it was really important it wouldn’t be silent, right?) and go with the letter that really does the work, which means going back to the consonant rule. To use our previous examples, we end up with iterarf for write, ockwurstnarf for knockwurst, omenarf for gnome, ifenarf for knife and eumaticnarf for pneumatic. I realize it seems a little odd looking at the words, but Dog Latin is more a spoken language than a written one.

  You may well ask, “What about words that have only one letter, like I, or itsy-bitsy teeny-tiny words like am or go?” Good question. Since there is not much to work with, you can leave them alone sometimes, unless they begin with a vowel, in which case you just add one of the y or w endings (e.g., am becomes amwarf or amyarf, and I becomes Iwarf or Iyarf). But even some two-letter words lend themselves well to Dog-Latination, such as me, which becomes emarf or be which becomes ebarf. Use your judgment tempered with experience, just as Archie Goodwin would do. Same goes with some three-letter words, like wee, but with most three-letter words you’ll usually be able to apply either the consonant or vowel rule.

  Now we move on to letters that work together to make a single sound, such as Sh, Ph, Cl and Th. There are many words where the first two or three letters work together but begin with a vowel, such as Athens or Euthanasia (a word all dogs hate, of course). In those cases, we just revert back to the rule for vowel-words, adding either arf, warf or yarf, so Athens, for example, becomes Athensarf, Athenswarf or Athensyarf.

  With words that begin with consonants, we use the consonant rule that you are now familiar with, but we threat the multiple letters as if they were a single letter, as in the following table:

  Then

  Entharf

  Pharmacy

  Armacypharf

  Shush

  Ushsharf

  Shallow

  Allowsharf

  Claws

  Awsclarf

  Thick

  Icktharf

  Clue

  Ueclarf

  Bladder

  Adderblarf

  Snausage

  Ausagesnarf

  Phantom

  Antompharf

  That’s all, folks. Armed with the above rules and a good dose of puckish Pomeranian humor and snarkiness, you’ll not only be able to amaze your friends, baffle your adversaries, and annoy everyone, you’ll be able to speak Dog Latin like a native.

  Ebarf ursharf to usearf Ogdarf Atinlarf everyarf ancecharf ouyarf etgarf. Ouyarf evernarf ancarf elltarf enwharf omeonesarf isyarf isteninglarf. Oodgarf ucklarf!