"It is a lovely language, but it takes a very long time saying anything in it, because we do not say anything in it, unless it is worth taking a long time to say, and to listen to." - Treebeard, The Two Towers, J.R.R. Tolkien
Kay(f)bop(t) is the shortened name of a constructed language by conlanger Daniel Swanson on his WordPress blog CrazyNinjaGeeks. The proper name of the language is kay(f)dan(f)san(t)ap(t)vlir(t)sang(b)es(p)u(t)vom(b)ngag(t)vlim(p)kay(f)sna(f)kay(f)ga(f) bop(t)veg(p)daf(f)shof(b)*om(p)vlim(p)ga(f)vlim(p)ga(f), which means “limited, expected, inedible, undying, epic language worth less than $10, which is far less (or more) useful than the average usefulness of things in this category."
Kay(f)bop(t) - which is pronounced aloud as "kaybop," while wearing a fedora on one's head during the "kay," then rapidly replacing it with a top hat on the "bop" - has a phonemic inventory closely resembling that of English, but it also features unusual sounds like the left and right lateral click as phonemically distinct sounds (not allophones!), the "faciomanual click," and the "percussive bimanual stop." There are also four phonemic hats which must be worn during a given syllable, for pronunciation to be correct. These hats a represented as letters in parentheses: the top hat (t), baseball cap (b), fedora (f), and a hat which must bear the likeness or shape of either a pangolin or a turkey (p). The writing system of Kay(f)bop(t) is mostly the Latin alphabet, but sometimes certain Chinese characters are included, and the letters representing vowels can vary widely in what vowel they are actually intended to represent, having many overlapping allophones among the six allowed vowels, / i/, / u/, / e/, / ø/, / o/, and / a/.
Kay(f)bop(t) grammar relies on the agglutination of a root word to many suffixes that assign its characteristics and behaviour within the sentences. A root word can have as many as eighteen fully unrelated meanings, which would inflict an enormous degree of vagueness on the conlang, if not for these many suffixes as a manner of rendering the meaning contextual and precise. Possible suffix qualities include such things as edibility, market value, grammatical gender, expectation, day of the week, manner of death, and how awesome the concept of the root word is. Every suffix category must be used in every word spoken, meaning that it can take a very long time to speak even the shortest sentences.
Swanson's stated goal in creating Kay(f)bop(t) was to incorporate as many as he could of the suggestions on the Bad Conlanging Ideas tumblr blog and other similar communities which recreationally mock the "kitchen sink philosophy" of people who are new to conlanging and wish to apply every peculiar linguistic notion they can to their creations. Kay(f)bop(t) saw a leap in popularity among conlangers in 2016, after Swanson recorded video of himself giving a translation of what he claims to be the text of the Tower of Babel story from the Bible, but which - due to the inherent ambiguity of roots in Kay(f)bop(t) - is equally a translation of Rick Astley's song "Never Gonna Give You Up."
Iron Noder 2021, 11/30