Fun Japanese Language Game: Babigo!

by 54 Comments

There are a lot of small things about a language that you might not even recognize until you’re studying another one. I’ve known Pig Latin since I was a kid, but it never really occurred to me that other languages also had weird language games.

That’s why when, in our post about Tohoku-ben a few weeks ago, commenter Heogw showed us a Japanese language game called Babigo, I was really interested. I’d never heard of a language game in another language, and I guess I’d never really thought about it before. Heogw posted this video of actress Kiritani Mirei demonstrating Babigo on a Japanese variety show:

[yframe url='http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fLKhOIqW8w']

…wait, what? Let’s back up a little bit and talk about how Babigo works.

Babigo (バビ語) revolves around the Japanese characters ba, bi, bu, be, and bo (バビブベボ). You slip these b characters in between other characters in a word to mix it up. So for instance, konnichiwa would turn into kobonnibichibiwaba, Tofugu becomes Tobofubugubu, and Hashi becomes Habashibi.

Confusing? Absolutely. Babigo can confuse even a native Japanese speaker. But it can also be a lot of fun to try out and use on unsuspecting friends.

If you want a better idea of how Babigo works, maybe retro pop group Triangle can help you out:

[yframe url='http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VcRhAV7ouGE']

Will playing Babigo make you fluent in Japanese, a kanji master, and the most popular kid on your block? Probably not, but it’s still a fun tongue-twisting game to try out.

Do you know any other language games? Let us know in the comments.

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  • Sara Ivcevic

    I’m from Austria and we played the exact same game. We called it “BB language”. When I was in primary school I kept talking with my friends like this for the whole day, confusing everyone around us. It’s really fun for kids.

  • Viktória Marosi

    I know this kind of game from my childhood. But obviously, not with Japanese, but with Hungarian language! ^^ We use ‘va, vá, ve, vé, vi, ví, vu, vú, vü, vű, vö, vő’ and place it in words, just like in this Japanese game. For example: we ask someone: 
    “Teve tuvudsz ivígy beveszévélnivi?”, the original sentence would be: “Te tudsz így beszélni?” (means: Can you speak like this?). I used to play it in school a lot when I was about 9-10 years old. ^^

  • MidnightMoonrise

    “Hongkongese” as well in English.
    Just adding ‘ong’ after any consonant. It was popular about 3 years ago in high schools,…

  • grotesk_faery

    This is totally Ubbi Dubbi, just in Japanese.

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