Gibberish is a generic term in English for talking that sounds like speech, but has no actual meaning (such as "ja sun tecumba tapar") or ("la bgud duyier jusrekd, oh mai!"). This meaning has also been extended to meaningless text or gobbledygook, such as "snoopy negro, weepy hambuglar!". The common theme in gibberish statements is a lack of literal sense, which can also be described as a presence of nonsense. In the realm of computers, the displaying or printing of binary (non-text) data due to a fault in hardware and/or software is called gibberish (e.g. simulated by entering "TYPE C:WINDOWSSYSTEM32CMD.EXE" or "cat /bin/sh"). It is also a "language" frequently used by teenagers that can be understood, in which the words are divided by syllables and the first sound is spoken, followed by "idiga", then the last sound.

A family of language games in English are sometimes referred to as "Gibberish". Comedian Sid Caesar was noted for what he called "double-talk", an ability to speak varieties of nonsense syllables that sounded (to Americans) as if he was speaking various foreign languages.

Origin of the term

The term is first seen in English in the early 16th century . There are three common theories of origin for the term "gibberish". One says that the basis is in the old word "gibber" which is allied to "jabber". However, the use of "gibberish" is recorded before the use of "gibber", which weakens this theory.

A second explanation is that the word comes from the name of the famous 8th-century Arabian alchemist, Jabir ibn Hayyan, whose name was Latinized as "Geber", thus the term "gibberish" arose as a reference to the unintelligible jargon often used by Jabir and other alchemists who followed.

A third expanation is from the British colony Gibraltar, whose residents frequently speak in Spanish and english during their conversations. Gibraltarians will often start a sentence in Spanish and switch to English halfway through, making it difficult for non-locals to follow.

Uses in Fiction

In the "Sons of Arizona" storyline of the comic series "Y: The Last Man", Yorick Brown's compatriots Agent 355 and Dr. Allison Mann communicate in Gibberish when not wishing to be understood. A woman the trio have encountered instantly recognizes the Gibberish, describing it to Yorick (who had been told it was Chinese) as "like Pig Latin that only girls know".

See also

• Double Dutch
• Grammelot
• Jabberwocky — English poem written in nonsense
• The Ketchup Song
• Lorem ipsum
• Macarron Chacarron - song with (Spanish) nonsense lyrics
• Mojibake — Random nonsense characters generated by foreign text
• Mumbo Jumbo (phrase)
• Nonsense
• Scat singing
• Simlish
• Vonlenska

External links

• A statistical gibberish generator based on Markov chains
• Pronounceable gibberish generator
• The Online Dictionary of Language Terminology
• Bendonium World

References