Totoiana ("Totoian"), also known as the "Totoian language" ( ro, Limba totoiană) or the "inverted language" ( ro, Limba întoarsă, link=no),
is a speech form used in the village of
Totoi in
Alba County,
Romania.
It is unique to the village and not spoken in the other villages that form part of the
commune
A commune is an alternative term for an intentional community. Commune or comună or comune or other derivations may also refer to:
Administrative-territorial entities
* Commune (administrative division), a municipality or township
** Communes of ...
of
Sântimbru, to which Totoi belongs.
Totoiana was created with the purpose of being unintelligible for normal Romanian speakers, although its origins or the reason why this would be needed are unknown.
It has been said that, since the inhabitants of Totoi were good wood artisans who traded with their products, Totoiana could have been created so that other merchants could not understand them. However, George Cadar, a member of the Romanian Association of Semiotic Studies, claims to have recorded a similar form of speech far from Alba County, although he did not elaborate on this.
Some also say it was created by servants so that their
boyar
A boyar or bolyar was a member of the highest rank of the feudal nobility in many Eastern European states, including Kievan Rus', Bulgaria, Russia, Wallachia and Moldavia, and later Romania, Lithuania and among Baltic Germans. Boyars were sec ...
employers in the nobility class could not understand them.
Totoiana is still spoken in the village, and its inhabitants recall that Totoiana was once more widely spoken than Romanian in Totoi, even if it is now only used for fun "with a beer". To speak Totoiana, the Romanian word is said from the middle to the end and then the beginning is added to it.
For simple two-syllable words, the syllables are inverted. For example, ("table") would become ''săma''.
A "
u" is generally added for words that are harder to pronounce when inverted.
This is the case of ("cup"), which becomes ''harupa'' in Totoiana.
Other examples of Totoiana are ''Fanuște'',
''Laenico'' and ''Anio''
("
Ștefan",
"
Nicolae" and "
Ioan", Romanian names),
''cava'' ("cow", in Romanian) and ''nudru nubu'' ("farewell", in Romanian).
An inverted speech form similar to Totoiana also exists in the French language and is known as ''
verlan'' (from , "the inverse", but inverted).
See also
*
Gumuțeasca
Gumuțeasca or Gomuțeasca (sometimes referred to as ''limba gumuțească'', "Gumutseascan language", or ''limba de sticlă'', "language of the glass") is an argot (a speech form spoken by a group of people to prevent outsiders from understanding ...
, an argot spoken in Romania
*
Romanian dialects, even if Totoiana does not represent a dialect
References
{{Romanian language
Romanian language varieties and styles
Romanian culture
Cant languages
Language games
Romanian slang