Anguish Languish

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.