Ciezarney: Secret Language of Our Fathers
Several times growing up, my dad claimed to know a secret language. He would utter several sentences of phrases containing more z’s than my mind could comprehend. At one point, my sister even seemed to be picking up on it. I thought they were both crazy. It seemed impossible to me that my dad could know anything of the sort.
Twenty odd years later I found out I was wrong. I’m listening to Robin’s news on Howard Stern. She plays a recording of Hulk Hogan and his son talking over the prison phones. The son speaks English, then switches over to a combination of code words and a language containing z’s galore and that sounded exactly like what my Dad had spoken so many years earlier.
Howard and the crew were stumped. Via telephone, they brought in one of Hulksters friends and fellow Sirius broadcaster Bubba the Love Sponge. He revealed that Hulk was speaking a language called Carnie. Professional wrestling got it’s start in carnivals where a secret language was used to communicate behind the backs of the public.
Here are a few good explanations of carnie
http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~cpercy/courses/6362-ellis
“Carnie cant, the secret language native to the American carnival circuit, also called z-Latin, alfalfa, or Ciezarney (amongst other titles). In Carnie, consonants are sporadically followed by the sequence <iez>; so, to use Russell and Murray’s pedantic example, phoneme becomes phiezoniezeme”
http://www.goodmagic.com/carny/ciazarn.htm
“A little like pig-latin… you insert an invariant nonsense syllable after each consonant. In Carny, the syllable is always “eaz”, pronounced “ee-uz…Carny was once common inside the ring among wrestlers and referees, very much like Pig-Latin where a syllable is added to any word — “finish” being turned into “fee-ya-zin-ish” or “gimmick” being turned into “Gee-ya-zimmick.”
Dad was never into wrestling, but he did work for a zoo/carnival back in the day. I guess he picked up a little carney speak along the way.
I can still hardly believe it believe it. Dad actually was speaking something of a language. Sorry I doubted you Dad!
if my memory serves me correct, I remember you telling me your Dads favorite saying was, “ssssssssshhhhhhiiiiiiit” and then a deep *sigh*. I also know he was suprised by the combination of butter and jam on toast.
the only phrase i remember was zif zyou wzant, back when you were in school and he used to take me to sit at the counter at the coffee shop and let me load a cap gun with raisins and pretend to shoot people, he used to talk like that, I think I only understood some of it because he would say shit like, you want a chocolate cupcake and I really didnt know exactly what he was saying but there was a cupcake so I had a basic comprehension. And he would watch me all day while you were at school because he worked at night, most of the time he was asleep though and i used to run around the apartment just touching things I wasnt supposed to and he would take me to the junk yard and shit and lift me up into the double stacked cars and make me get knobs and that he couldn’t reach. Man those were the days, he would take me to the coffee shop and sit there drinking coffee for ever talking to the guy behind the counter and i would spin around on the stools and then the guy would yell at me for sticking my tongue inside a can of coke because those were the days of those razor sharp pull tabs, I’d be sitting right next to daddy but he was so busy talking that the guy he was talking to had to yell at me, I always thought that guy was a dick, but I guess I really could have cut my tongue off. I busted a raisin in his ass on the way out
oh that’s what he said. i thought it was zif zoof zwaf and i could never figure it out. i really thought it was jibberish. now it’s all making sense.
Yeah I guess he wasn’t nuts, I thought he made it up too, I just went along with it for the cupcakes.
I’ve got to ask him again about the lions mauling the one lion that had died in the night and he had to go in with a small car and tie a cable to it and drag it out and then bury it in the woods. I think he worked at that place for like 9 years or some shit.
I say Shiiiiit all the time when I get up. And aaahhhh fuck too. It’s passed down from generation to generation. Not liking to move is a survival mechanism.
I know how to speak carnie. It has been passed down through my family for generations. I can’t exactly explain how to translate it, but yes; there are a lot of extra z’s. I was told that my great, great grandparents were some of the first carnival folk ever. Apparently, they developed a pig-latin type “language” so they could communiate with eachother in a way that their “marks” could not understand.
If you would like to discuss further, please respond.
Lani
Same here. I’ve been speaking it my entire life. My grandpa was an escape artist in the 30s and my dad sold jewelry and engraved at carnivals.
i’d have to be immersed in it a while before i’d pick that up. even though you explained it i still don’t really get it. i took spanish in high school and only got a “C”.
once, when i was working at cody’s books in berkeley i put aside a copy of the oxford latin text book and decided i would teach myself ancient latin so i could read caesars momoirs of of the gallic wars. but just before i was gonna buy the book i stopped and said to myself, “get real, dude! no way youre gonna do this”, so i saved myself from wasting $24.95.
true story.
(yawn)
Iay antway emay omesay lephanteyay arseay!
You want elephant ass?
Elephants are so hot.
I get excited when I see them spraying mud on themselves with their trunks!
So sexy.
elephants are unstoppable
I used to speak Ciezarnie, with a few friends at a hospital where I worked years ago. Most have since died, so no one to talk with much anymore as I have since moved to another town.
I loved learning the language and we often used it to talk about fellow employees while in the cafeteria, without them having a clue as to what we were saying. I believe because we learned to speak fast, it was harder for anyone to actually know what was being said.
Glad I found actual references to this dying/dead art of secret speech.
I credit my Yahoo Home Page for featuring a video dealing with the, “Bootililng”, language that is dying out in Bootville, CA, for bringing the art of speaking Ciezarney back to my attention.
Thank you for such a positive comment with your Cizarnie memories. That’s too bad that all your friends though. What happened? How did we lose them?
If you’re interested in learning the whole story behind “ciezarney” you should check out my book, The Secret History of Carnival Talk. I learned it from my grandparents, who travelled with a carnival in 1937 – then I would use it with my friends so people couldn’t understand us. Eventually I decided to research how it developed, and then how it moved on to wrestling, hip-hop, etc. The book also has a bunch of photographs my grandfather took of their carnival. Visit me at carnivaltalk.wordpress.com!
I learned Carney at the same I learned English!
Just a young pup. (from my Dad) My college age kids were both taught when they were young too. Let the tradition go on and on and onnn!!!
That is cool. Thanksgiving must be something else at your place.
The slaves back in the day also used it to talk around the owners..