The farfallino alphabet (in Italian

Italian language

Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...

 alfabeto farfallino) is a language game used primarily in Italy

Italy

Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

, which can be regarded as an elementary form of substitution cipher

Substitution cipher

In cryptography, a substitution cipher is a method of encryption by which units of plaintext are replaced with ciphertext according to a regular system; the "units" may be single letters , pairs of letters, triplets of letters, mixtures of the above, and so forth...

. It is usually used by child

Child

Biologically, a child is generally a human between the stages of birth and puberty. Some vernacular definitions of a child include the fetus, as being an unborn child. The legal definition of "child" generally refers to a minor, otherwise known as a person younger than the age of majority...

ren for amusement or to converse in (perceived) privacy from adult

Adult

An adult is a human being or living organism that is of relatively mature age, typically associated with sexual maturity and the attainment of reproductive age....

s. The name "farfallino" comes from the word "farfalla" (butterfly), which is an ordinary Italian word but sounds like the "codified" words in farfallino alphabet. The farfallino alphabet is similar to games found in other languages such as jeringonza

Jeringonza

Jeringonza is a Spanish language game played by children in Spain and all over Latin America. It consists of adding the letter p after each vowel of a word, and repeating the vowel. For example, Carlos turns into Cápar-lopos....

 (Spanish

Spanish language

Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...

/Portuguese

Portuguese language

Portuguese is a Romance language that arose in the medieval Kingdom of Galicia, nowadays Galicia and Northern Portugal. The southern part of the Kingdom of Galicia became independent as the County of Portugal in 1095...

), langue de feu (French

French language

French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...

), Fay Kee Bolee

Fay Kee Bolee

Fay Kee Bolee is a language game used by Urdu-speaking people in Pakistan. It can be regarded as a trivial substitution cipher and it is somethings used by adults to converse in privacy in the presence of children...

 (Urdu

Urdu

Urdu is a register of the Hindustani language that is identified with Muslims in South Asia. It belongs to the Indo-European family. Urdu is the national language and lingua franca of Pakistan. It is also widely spoken in some regions of India, where it is one of the 22 scheduled languages and an...

) and pig latin

Pig Latin

Pig Latin is a language game of alterations played in English. To form the Pig Latin form of an English word the first consonant is moved to the end of the word and an ay is affixed . The object is to conceal the meaning of the words from others not familiar with the rules...

 (English

English language

English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

).

Rules and variations

The usual rules for farfallino alphabet are based on the substitution of each vowel with a 3 letter sequence where the vowel itself is repeated with an intercurring f:

• casa → cafasafa
• lago → lafagofo
• stella → stefellafa
• re → refe
• cercare → cefercafarefe

There are several minor variations to this scheme. One such variation is based on the following substitution rules:

• a → agasa
• e → eghese
• i → ighisi
• o → ogoso
• u → ugusu

Although rules for e and i look different, they are not; the additional h is needed in Italian to enforce a voiced velar plosive

Voiced velar plosive

The voiced velar plosive is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is g. Strictly, the IPA symbol is the so-called "opentail G" , though the "looptail G" is...

sound for letter g, which is implicit in the other combinations. Another more complicated scheme, which is used in some regions of Italy, is as follows:

• a → aufer
• e → enghel
• i → ix
• o → older
• u → uflez

Here is an example:

Quefestofo èfe ufun efesefempiofo difi frafasefe ifin afalfafabefetofo fafarfafallifinofo. Nofon èfe fafacifilefe, afanchefe peferchèfe vafa defettofo ifil pifiùfu vefelofocefe pofossifibifilefe

Its translation in Italian is:

Questo è un esempio di frase in alfabeto farfallino. Non è facile, anche perchè va detto il più velocemente possibile

Which means, in English:

This is an example of phrase in Farfallino Alphabet. It is not easy, also because you should say it as fast as possible.