Rövarspråket
Encyclopedia
Rövarspråket is a Swedish
Sweden
Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....

 language game
Language game
A language game is a system of manipulating spoken words to render them incomprehensible to the untrained ear. Language games are used primarily by groups attempting to conceal their conversations from others...

. It became popular after the books about Kalle Blomkvist by Astrid Lindgren
Astrid Lindgren
Astrid Anna Emilia Lindgren , 14 November 1907 – 28 January 2002) was a Swedish author and screenwriter who is the world's 25th most translated author and has sold roughly 145 million copies worldwide...

, where the children use it as a code
Code
A code is a rule for converting a piece of information into another form or representation , not necessarily of the same type....

, both at play and in solving actual crimes.

It was used by robbers on the Swedish
Sweden
Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....

 island Gotland
Gotland
Gotland is a county, province, municipality and diocese of Sweden; it is Sweden's largest island and the largest island in the Baltic Sea. At 3,140 square kilometers in area, the region makes up less than one percent of Sweden's total land area...

 as they didn't want the Visby
Visby
-See also:* Battle of Visby* Gotland University College* List of governors of Gotland County-External links:* - Visby*...

 Garrison to understand what their plans were.

The principle is easy enough. Every consonant (spelling matters, not pronunciation) is doubled, and an o is inserted in-between. Vowels are left intact. It is quite possible to render the Rövarspråket version of an 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...

 word as well as a Swedish
Swedish language
Swedish is a North Germanic language, spoken by approximately 10 million people, predominantly in Sweden and parts of Finland, especially along its coast and on the Åland islands. It is largely mutually intelligible with Norwegian and Danish...

, e.g.:
sos-tot-u-bob-bob-o-ror-non


(or less intelligbly written without the hyphens) that syllable chain would mean stubborn. Needless to say, the code is not very useful in written form, but it can be tough when spoken by a trained (and thus quick) user. On the other hand, for an untrained speaker, a word or phrase can often be something of a tongue-twister
Tongue-twister
A tongue-twister is a phrase that is designed to be difficult to articulate properly, and can be used as a type of spoken word game. Some tongue-twisters produce results which are humorous when they are mispronounced, while others simply rely on the confusion and mistakes of the speaker for their...

 or a shibboleth
Shibboleth
A shibboleth is a custom, principle, or belief distinguishing a particular class or group of people, especially a long-standing one regarded as outmoded or no longer important...

.

Today, the books (and subsequent films) are so well-known in Sweden, and also in Norway, that the language has become integrated in the culture of schoolchildren. Most Scandinavians are familiar with it.

External links

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