… there were very, very rare circumstances where it might occur, such as debt slavery (although this was an archaic practice and unheard of once we get to the Imperial period).

OP, if you are interested: debt slavery is a very interesting feature of archaic Rome. If a citizen could not settle a debt the creditor could sell him into slavery trans Tiberim peregre, which literally means across the Tiber but implies that enslavement of a Roman citizen could not take place within Roman territory. He had to be enslaved abroad and lost his citizenship.

There was also nexum, or debt-bondage, which was distinct from sale into slavery. The debtor retained his status as a Roman citizen and could live in Roman territory. However, this was abolished by the Lex Poetelia in 326 BC, so it might be too early for your story.

You didn’t mention what your protagonist would be accused of, but you could make your villain have your hero enslaved for an unfair debt. The issue of unfair debt was a real one at some periods in ancient Rome, and it is relevant for today’s reader as well.

T.J. Cornell’s Beginnings of Rome is my main source.

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Hi there – we have approved your question related to your project, and we are happy for people to answer. However, we should warn you that these queries often do not get positive responses. We have several suggestions that you may want to take on board regarding this and future posts:

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Hello historians! I've just finished reading CHAOS: Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties by Tom O'Neill - I enjoyed it and I appreciated that O'Neill avoided trying to make connections he had no evidence of, even if it wasn't as narratively satisfying. I've just begun Acid Dreams by Martin A. Lee, but it's giving me a hankering for a more thorough exploration of the history of the hippie movement in the US. The AskHistorians book masterlist suggests Hippie by Barry Miles but I'm having trouble finding a copy. Are there any other suggestions for American hippie history?

yeah, I was not so young and we had less time. sitting at home on your phone takes a lot less time then going and doing stuff.

There was the anticipation of the event or meet up. We went fishing, or bowling, or clubbing or any number of things and made real connection with people.

Pig Latin is an example of what is known as a “language game” and many languages have them. The reasons to use a language game varies wildly, but it is often something children come up with and pass on or used to conceal speech (or both). Pig Latin, or as it was first known, Dog Latin, is actually very old and we have some evidence of its use as early as Shakespeare (in Love’s Labour’s Lost).

The rules many follow for Pig Latin seem to be somewhat more formalized by the early 1900s and it was known as a game children frequently played as referenced by newspapers at the time. When it comes to regularity I suppose it depends - some children were likely “fluent” just as they are today. Unfortunately, we can’t know for certain beyond the anecdotal when it comes to just how prevalent it was among schoolchildren, but there are signs that it was likely equally or more prevalent than it is today. Pig Latin is referenced frequently throughout the early 1900s in media such as songs and movies which lends itself to the idea that Pig Latin was used regularly in some capacity, although probably primarily among children.

Beyond that, we have other evidence of regularity. The first is that several Pig Latin phrases have made their way into the common vernacular we use today and reference words that are now relatively uncommon. The word “ixnay” is a Pig Latin word that is still commonly used and has its origin in the early 1900s (per entymonline). It is derived from the word “nix” as in “to cancel” or “nothing” which has largely fallen out of common usage. For this to have survived to 21st century English it had to have been used with some regularity.

Another point that I think is very interesting but doesn’t conclusively point to regular use in the 20s and 30s is that there are actually a few known “dialects” of Pig Latin. Basically, sometimes the rules of Pig Latin result in patterns of sounds that are difficult for speakers to produce or sound incorrect for whatever reason. This happens especially with words starting with a vowel (an example taken from a 2003 paper I will cite below) such as “oven.” Following traditional rules it should be “oven-ay” but studies have found that’s not actually what happens, around half of respondents do something different (what that difference is varies but there are some commonalities between speaker groups). Though there isn’t much literature, those who have studied Pig Latin tend to present that there are two main dialects (Dialect A and Dialect B), which are established by a 1995. For “dialects” to have the chance to form, it would follow that use has to be so regular that consistent variations actually get preserved and transmitted - but, importantly, there could be other explanations (but it’s really interesting so I felt I had to bring it up).

Anyways, language games are super interesting and reveal a lot about languages and even childhood language development. Pig Latin is still in pretty common usage at least into the early 2000s.

Sources on the dialect variation: * Barlow, J. A. (2001). Individual differences in the production of initial consonant sequences in Pig Latin. Lingua, 111(9), 667–696. * Vaux, Bert. (2003). Underdetermination In Language Games: Survey and Analysis of Pig Latin Dialects. Annual meeting of the Linguistic Society of America * Davis, S., & Hammond, M. (1995). On the Status of Onglides in American English. Phonology, 12(2), 159–182.

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Thank you for explaining. I did not in any way intend to suggest the “khazar theory”. Now that i understand, i am sickened that i gave that impression. I can’t express how contrite i am that I gave that impression.

The reason I brought it up was to flesh out why the diaspora was so spread out. For a brief moment in time Judaism spread into an unexpected direction, the Pontic steppe, because of the conversion of the Khazar elites. Yes it’s a very tiny piece of the whole puzzle. Ultimately that community disappeared. But if you wanted to look at the Jewish diaspora in say the 10th century, it would have been important.