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Many childhood ambitions fade with time. One of mine was becoming bilingual, with French as the goal. I fell in love with la belle langue during three years of high school study and took another course in college. Eventually, though, I realized I lacked the imitation skills needed to sound remotely authentic.

That led me to consider the many other “foreign” languages people encounter.

Baby talk is one, full of burbling expressions that only a mother—and sometimes a father—can decipher. One child in our family called her Aunt Elly “Patchenella.” Everyone adored those little inventions and took pride in translating them. Young twins are even said to develop a private language that only they understand.

Teenagers have their own mysterious tongue, at least on the rare occasions when they speak to each other in person. Texting adds a dense collection of initials designed to keep anyone from writing out a complete phrase. My command of that language never progressed beyond LOL and BTW.

Workplaces also develop specialized jargon, built from abbreviations, initials and shortened words. Sometimes the vocabulary belongs to an entire region. Moving to the Washington, D.C., area—better known as Alphabet City—was my first real immersion. Everyone seemed to know what it meant when somebody worked at OMB, DEA or DOJ.

But there was one language I spoke with passable proficiency as a child: Pig Latin.

It seemed like the perfect secret code. Adults surely could not understand us, despite the inconvenient possibility that they had used it when they were children.

During a dull class, I might pass a note to whichever friend held “best friend” status that week: “I anplay to alkway home after oolscay. Wanna come too?” It was hardly riveting material.

As our fluency improved, so did our vocabulary. Simple words such as “ovelay” and “arcay” gave way to more elaborate complaints: “I atehay this stupid assclay and I wish this eachertay would utshay up!”

Anyone considering learning the language should prepare to rebuild an entire vocabulary.

As for me, I say ixney to that.