h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

TC recently posted in Peer Review that during the war, German spies were often betrayed by their inability to pronounce the word "squirrel"

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Two questions really:

Under what circumstances in everyday covert operations could you envisage a spy unwittingly reveal his or her true identity in that way?

And then, how would you get someone to say "squirrel" without making them aware that you were angling to find out more about their motives?


Sample dialogue welcome

I think I heard that on Radio 2. No guarantees for the truth in it. It might be an urban myth, but it is plausible.

Let's go to the movies, maybe they will show some Tex Avery cartoon. I love the one with the crazy badger. No, hold on, not a badger... what was his name again?

This is generally known as a 'shibboleth', I think. This comes from an instance in the book of Judges in the Old Testament where the word 'shibboleth' was used to distinguish between two groups of people. One could only say 'sibboleth', and so could be easily identified.


Geggs

And I remember hearing a story from WW2 where one soldier challenged another to sing 'Mairzy doats and dozy doats'. W!k! says the song was written during 1943, so it must have been towards the end of the war.


Geggs

Smiley smiled inwardly, then cleaned his glasses on the fat end of his tie. Control was dying, of that there was no doubt. Yet the botched Czech operation had proved beyond doubt that the Service was infiltrated. Yet, by whom? It had to be someone sitting at this very table, in this very room, high up on the fifth floor at Cambridge Circus. He pretended not to study the department heads too closely as he confronted them directly. "Gentlemen, we have a mole in our midst! No, not a mole - one of those bushy-tailed thingies. What do I mean, Haydon?"

@ Geggs.

They didn;t have the power of the web at their disposal!

http://www.forvo.com/word/shibboleth/

or indeed.


http://www.forvo.com/word/squirrel/#en

You can't say onomatopoeia without sounding like a Geordie!

Smiley smiled inwardly, then cleaned his glasses on the fat end of his tie. Control was dying, of that there was no doubt. Yet the botched Czech operation had proved beyond doubt that the Service was infiltrated. Yet, by whom? It had to be someone sitting at this very table, in this very room, high up on the fifth floor at Cambridge Circus. He pretended not to study the department heads too closely as he confronted them directly. "Gentlemen, we have a mole in our midst! No, not a mole - one of those bushy-tailed thingies. What do I mean, Heinze?"

Whalesy deals and sealsy deals and little eelzy doysters.

That's easy for you to say.

I was now totally confused and checked whether how I thought squirrel was pronounced and how it is pronounced. It didn't differ. So what is supposed to be so hard about pronouncing it? There are a lot of other words which would lend themselves for spy-checking. Anything having th in it, for a start. Or a few consecutive words having ths and 's' sounds. Then there are all the Rs. Just have somebody read you a text like this: A31267884 and you'll immediately know if they're a native speaker. It's like a tongue twister.

My husband can't pronounce squirrel at all (he's Russian) and it is one of the few things he misses on completely, although his accent is clearly Russian. It's the skwi bit, although after the consonant cluster he seems to give up on the 'r' too. It's more like sk(w)il, with a very wooly w sound and only the hint of an 'r'.

My bilingual son is the same, interestingly. It's easy to get him to say it. 'What were you chasing in the park? No, not the pigeons, the other things?'

I guess the suggestion is that the German would pronounce it as 'sqvival' or something like.

Admittedly, I'm probably imagining a comedy cod-german accent rather than a real one...


Geggs

Almost somethingyou expect from 'Ello Ello' or simerlar.

"Don't tell them your name, Pike".

I think this story may originate from that old sage Jeremy Clarkson. I remember him telling this story when VW were threatening to buy Aston Martin. To beat off the bid, he suggested naming their new car 'The Squirrel'
All Germans would be unable to pronounce it, and so would withdraw the bid.
I think that was an episode of QI. I can't remember hearing this story before, but I heard it lots since.

I recall reading about the only German to escape successfully from an allied POW camp. On his first attempt he managed to board a train. Every time it stopped at a station he looked out of the window to see if he could work out where he was. But it seemed to be going round in circles! It kept stopping at some place called Bovril.

And I've just recalled Chic Murray...

'I was visiting the Commonwealth games, and I saw this chap carrying a big, long stick. So I asked him, "Are you a pole vaulter?" "No," he said, I'm German - but how did you know my name?" '

Great stories.

A professor I knew in Cologne was a Jew who'd survived being deported during the war. He was an expert in personal camouflage, and he thought in those terms.

One day he said to me, 'Your German accent is almost perfect. If anybody asks where you're from, tell them 'Siegen'. Everybody in Siegen has the same speech defect you do.'

What I want to know is - does 'squirrel' have two syllables?

In Pittsburgh, the word 'squirrel' has only one syllable.