Iwasn’t supposed to understand Potato language. It was my parents’ speech device employed when wishing to discuss certain apparently secret subjects in front of my brother and me. While chewing over some esoteric topic, they would suddenly lapse into Potato language, a.k.a ‘P-language’ or just ‘P’. Being a young child, the subject matter didn’t interest me – I was more intent on trying to figure out why on a whim they’d switch to speaking a discordant, discombobulated version of our every-day language.

Unbeknown to them, from the age of about seven I gradually became bilingual in P and by ten, I was fluent. As I grew older, I realised the point of converting to P was to discuss topics not intended for our ears.

As neither of our parents ever spoke to us in P, we didn’t speak it to them a

See Full Page