# Wikijunior:Languages/Playing with language

We\'ve looked at lots of existing languages from all around the world,
but if we really want to have fun with languages then we have to do more
than just look; we have to play as well. Imagine if you could talk to
your friends in your own private language that no one else knew. Or
imagine speaking a language where everything you said sounded silly, or
grumpy, or smart. Or imagine making up your own special words for all
the things you see around you. In this chapter we\'ll find out how to do
all these things and more.

Languages are like the recipes for cakes. You start off with a whole
bunch of different ingredients and then the recipe tells you how to mix
them all together. In a cake you might use some flour and some eggs, a
little bit of milk and butter and then maybe some chocolate. In a
language you use sounds and words and when you mix them all together you
end up with a sentence. And just like in a cake it is important how you
combine the ingredients. If you put too much water in your cake you will
end up with a slimy sludge instead of a cake. In a language if you
don\'t put your words in the right order, if you don\'t follow the
language\'s recipe, then you end up with a slimy sludge too. Let\'s try
it with a simple sentence:

If we didn\'t follow the recipe we might get:

```{=html}
<div class="center">
```
*The moon is made of bright green cheese.*

*Cheese is made of the bright green moon.*

*Green made of the moon is cheese bright.*

```{=html}
</div>
```
And these are just two of the silly sentences you can make by not
following the recipe for the language correctly. Try some more by
yourself, for example you could try saying it in reverse
order---starting with the last word and going to the first. No matter
how you rearrange the words, there is only one correct recipe that says
that the moon is made of bright green cheese. Some of the other recipes
make sentences that make sense but don\'t say what we want them to say,
but most recipes just end up being silly. The \"recipe\" of a language
that determine which words go where, and what they mean is the *syntax*.

Without even realizing it, you already know the recipe to one
language---English. You know that putting words in some orders makes
sense but in others it doesn\'t. But imagine if you only ever had one
kind of cake. It would get boring. It\'s the same in languages: the more
different language recipes you know, the more fun it is.

If you wanted to make a language recipe there are two different ways you
could do it. The first is to get an existing language recipe (for
example, English) and use it to make a language cake, putting lots of
icing on it so that nobody other than you and your friends know that
underneath the icing it is really the same old cake. The other is to
make a whole new recipe from scratch. Because it is easier to add icing
to a cake that already exists rather than bake a whole new one, we\'ll
start with that.

## Putting the icing on our language cake

*Nac uoy daer siht ecnetnes? eno siht tuoba woH?*

If you can read English then you can read these sentences -- but you
might need a hint. When we write a normal word, we start at the left
side of a word and keep writing until we reach the right side. But what
if we started on the right side and wrote to the left---what if we wrote
words backwards? Try reading the sentences above again, but this time
read all the words backwards. You might find it easier if you try
writing them down.

So what did that say? Did it make sense? Try reading the second sentence
again but this time instead of reading each word backwards read the
whole sentence backwards. Now try saying it out loud. What does it sound
like? Is it difficult to say? Why are some of the words hard to say but
some of them are easy? We\'ll find out in a later section .

You can use talking or writing backwards as a secret language for you
and your friends.

## Making a language recipe from scratch

Remember the chapter on
Quenya? Well, it was a
language recipe that J.R.R. Tolkien made up. He spent a large part of
his life making Quenya and never really finished it, but don\'t worry:
while the language recipes we make here will not be complete like real
languages, they will still be usable, so you will be able to say simple
things to your friends with them, without anybody else knowing what you
are saying.

### How to make a language sound the way you want it to

### All the amazing things words can do

### Mixing all your words together to make sentences

