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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