Shiritori!  People go back and forth- someone says a word, the next person has to say a word that starts with the last kana in that word, and it continues from there.  No repeats, words that end in N get you kicked from the game, and with words that end sometihng like “shii”, you can either use “i” or “shi”.  

I never knew Japanese had this game! In Malaysia, we played something similar, except using fafifufefo instead of babibubebo. It’ll look like this “Sefelafamatfat Pafagifi” Girls in middle schools use this as their means of communication so that the boys won’t get what they were saying and gawd they were fast. When I did it with them, I’m considered slow.

It actually reminds me a lot of Mushmouth from Fat Albert, and Wikipedia draws a comparison to Ubbi Dubbi.

this reminds me of the language game ‘ubidubi’ that was on the public tv station in the united states when I was a kid. you instert “ub” in front of every vowel sound. here’s a video clip http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WnPW8-FZG2E&feature=related

In Polish there is a similar thing, but a bit easier: you put “ka” before every syllable, so e.g. Tofugu becomes “katokafukagu”. It’s mostly used by girls and it’s trivial to “decode” a message when you know the principle.

Yea, I was going to say it’s a lot like Ubbi Dubbi which I used allllll the time as a kid because it was on my favorite TV show Zoom…until my mom figured it out. But now I can try with Japanese! Yay!

Haha, the Mushmouth comparison is spot on!

Aaaaaah I watched Zoom as a kid too!

Interesting that it’s the “language of robbers!”

Haha! Himitsu no Arashi-chan! <3.

That's interesting. It would be so difficult for a non-Japanese speaker to use it, let along understanding it when it's spoken.

Shiritori has always been my favourite language game for Japanese. It makes me think really hard about the words themselves and also shows how limited my vocabulary really is, especially if we play without using names.

in german we have the “Löffelsprache” where a becomes alewa, e elewe, etc.. in that case tofugu would be tolewofulewugulewu

Oh! We have the same game in Mexico, called “el idioma de la F” or “the F language”. It was very popular whit elementary school girls when I was a kid. 

lololol ひみつの嵐ちゃん for the win <3
this is totally confusing, but cool xD.

There’s actually a post about this game floating around on Tofugu somewhere, and a thread where a bunch of commenters started playing!

Yup, right here: http://www.tofugu.com/2008/10/04/how-to-play-shiritori/

Here in the Netherlands had the same with a friend. Add ‘le/we’ after each syllable. 
‘Hoe gaat het’ (How are you) would become ‘Hoelewoe galewaat helewet?’ If you spoke fast enough and didn’t belong to the group, no-one knew wtf you were saying. Secret language kinda thing. In high school I started using runes and/or hiragana as a ‘secret’ language in notes. No-one got it anyway! 

I think each country has these ‘(kid)secret languages’ like latin pig etc. 

I’m from Guatemala, and like in japanese “babigo” in spanish there is something call “jerigonza” it is like babigo, but instead of only using “b” sounds jerigonza uses “p”,”b”,”k”, “f” well, I think uses all consonants. 

Sorry for my english.

Yeah, looking at all these comments it really does seem like every language has its own secret kid language. Very interesting!

Huh, I’ll have to check out videos of Pigor. Thanks!

In Brazil we also have something like that, but we call it “língua do Pe” (which means “Pe language”). Basically, all you do is add the syllable “pe” before every syllable in a word (essentially what was described in an earlier comment as the Polish version of the game, but using a different syllable).

This is so interesting! Not only because of the fact that we get to see how many different nationalities are accessing this site, but also because it’s intriguing to wonder why some languages that have nothing to do with each other would have more closely related language games than ones of closer origins… (I don’t get why a Polish version would be more similar to the Brazilian Portuguese version than a Spanish one would…)

P.S. How difficult is that German game?!

LOL at the end the guy thanks her in Korean ^^ “Ohhh gamsahamnida.”

There’s a similar game in Spanish. I don’t really know what it’s called, but people use it to confuse others or relay messages between one another that other’s wouldn’t normally understand. Instead of babibubebo, after each syllable in a word, the vowel sound is repeated after an f.

Tofugu= Tofofufugufu
Te amo (I love you)= tefe afamofo

It’s super fun once you get the hang of it and it sounds so cool:D My parents used to use it once in a while and I finally got them to tell me what they meant with all their jibber jabber.

I wonder if it becomes like reading 1337 speak?

We have a similar game in Czech too :-)) It is really funny. We used to use it with my former director.. When our colleagues were too serious, we started to speak like this and they were looking at us with a big questionmarks on their faces :-))))) Oh yes, accountants are a little bit crazy..