Are There Any Good Reasons to Study Anguish? ☚
This is not an altogether silly question, and it deserves the prompt and unequivocal answer any Anguish Languish enthusiast will give it.
“Watcher mane, ardor rainy gut raisins toe sturdy anguish?” he will say, and will probably give you an impressive list of them which will certainly include the following:
1. Anguish is fun.
You and your friends can make a game out of learning Anguish, and you’ll have fun developing your own style and observing each other’s efforts. How to begin will be explained later.
2. Anguish Languish means verbal economy.
If words can be made to do double, triple, or even quadruple duty, it is obvious that we don’t need so many of them. Wouldn’t it be a comfort to know that, in the event of some unpredictable disaster wiping out half of our English vocabulary, we could, if we had learned Anguish, get along nicely with what we had left?[3]
3. Anguish helps out in certain social situations.
People who aren’t sure of themselves should learn Anguish. Suppose you have been asked to dinner by the president of your company and his wife. Since you haven’t met your hostess, you have spent some time, before going, thinking up something to say that will really interest her. Finally you decide to ask, during the dinner:
“Mrs. Bellowell, didn’t I hear that your brother Henry was discovered to be in collusion with those election crooks?”
The moment arrives, but you no sooner get her attention than you have sudden misgivings. Too late to change your subject, you slip deftly into Anguish:
“Mrs. Bellowell ... deaden are hair ditcher broader Hennery worse dish-cupboard toe bang collision wet dozer liquor-chin crocks?”
Chances are that everyone will be so fascinated by the graceful form of your question that not even your hostess will attach much importance to what you’ve asked.
EUROPE OILY DISK MOANING!
DOILY BOARD CASHES OR WARM!
4. Anguish relieves that terrible craving to tell dialect stories.
People who are addicted to telling dialect stories, or chronically frustrated because they can’t tell them without Scotch brogue or Brooklynese getting mixed up with Deep South, will be overjoyed with Anguish. Anguish is definitely not a dialect, since it consists only of unchanged English words which anyone can pronounce. By imparting a delicate and indefinably exotic accent to one’s speech, however, it not only provides a socially acceptable substitute for telling dialect stories, but adds to one’s personal charm.[4]
5. Anguish improves your English.
As your Anguish vocabulary increases, you’ll find that your English vocabulary does, too, but you must be careful not to mix them up—something which people orphan do when they begin to use words accordion to the way they sound rather than how they’re spelled. Words which are rare in English are often common enough in Anguish, so you have new opportunities to see them. Suppose you’re spending a week-end reciting nursery rhymes in Anguish to a happy group of children or immature adults, and come across SING A SONG OF SIXPENCE, A POCKET FULL OF RYE. In Anguish, this, of course, is SINKER SUCKER SOCKS PANTS, APOCRYPHAL AWRY. This will give you an unexpected chance to use the last two words.
You’d be surprised to know how many people haven’t the faintest idea what a xyster is until they hear a SPAL member talking about his fodder, murder, broader, and xyster. This makes them want to look xyster up. When they do, they find that, although xyster[5] in Anguish, may mean sister, in English it’s nothing in the world but a common raspatorium. Now raspatoria, and, therefore xysters are important surgical instruments, nice to know about before being scheduled for an aberration.
Speaking of xysters, hominy people know what higglery is? Very few, yet it occurs in the Anguish Languish version of something as well known as:
“Murder, mare argo art toe swarm?”
“Yap, mar doling dodder,
Hank yore clues honor higglery larme
An dun gore norther warder!”
While you’re looking up higglery, you might find larme, just a few pages away in Webster’s Unabridged.
“—wail, debt worse inner laest wake off Dismember—nor, inner foist wake off Janizary—Doctor Smatters (haze mar surging) gummier fun cull wan moaning, an set: ‘Gut moaning, Messes Huffywate, heresy ladle bat noose furrier—yore garner heifer heifer nodder aberration.’ Wail, whinny set debt—” etc., etc.
6. Practical Anguish.
Anguish can be used for group study at parties and entertainments; as a psychological test of something or other (we don’t know just what),[6] and as practice material in Speech and Typing classes.