Anguish Languish, Classics To Go

The Anguish Languish is an ersatz language constructed from similar-sounding English language words. It was created by Howard L. Chace circa 1940, and he later collected his stories and poems in the book Anguish Languish (Prentice-Hall, 1956). It is not really a language but rather humorous homophonic transformation. Example: "Ladle Rat Rotten Hut" means "Little Red Riding Hood" and "Mural: Yonder nor sorghum stenches shut ladle gulls stopper torque wet strainers" means: Moral: Under no circumstances should little girls stop to talk with strangers. Chace offered this description: "The Anguish Languish consists only of the purest of English words, and its chief raison d'être is to demonstrate the marvellous versatility of a language in which almost anything can, if necessary, be made to mean something else." His story "Ladle Rat Rotten Hut" is "Little Red Riding Hood" re-written with similar-sounding words substituting for the original folk tale. A professor of French, Chace wrote "Ladle Rat Rotten Hut" in 1940 to demonstrate that the intonation of spoken English is almost as important to the meaning as the words themselves.