Often a newbie's only conlang experience is with regular transformations of a natural language (such as English (both British and American)) into a code used e.g. on the playground. The following examples of weak crypto begin to establish a negative space around "real" conlang:
- abcdefghilmnoprstu: manages to fold the 26 letters of English into the eighteen letters of Irish while preserving pronunciation. Doesn't hide information as much as cutify it.
- Pig Latin: move initial consonant (or 'h') to end; add -ay
- ROT13 (see also ROT-13): Apply this common Caesar shift cipher, insert some vowels as nulls, and you're set.
- Ubbi Dubbi: add "ub" before each vowel cluster. Different dialects often replace "ub" with other vowel-consonant sounds.
- Gibberish: A step up in complexity from Ubbi Dubbi. For each syllable, change an initial consonant C to "Citherg" or an initial vowel V to "VthergV". (Exception: If this would result in a not readily pronounceable consonant cluster after the 'g', move a consonant before the 'itherg'.) Vithergerithergy c'ithergute. Again, dialect matters. However, Gibberish as seen on User Friendly's translation thread is a different language altogether.
Often, proper names are not "translated" so as to give the semblance of a language. Some more complex codes use different methods on different parts of speech.
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