Socceranto: Birth Of A Language

The 32 countries competing in the World Cup share 18 official languages between them--not including the local dialects many participants actually speak.

So, how are officials, players and managers meant to communicate? The answer is to adopt a shared international language. So argue the inventors of just such a language in a book published on Lulu, a website that lets anyone publish their own book.      

"Socceranto: Birth Of A Language" is part dictionary and part phrasebook. It is the work of an international team of fans led by an Argentinian-American student and an English schoolboy.      

"Things are all very well when Ecuador plays Costa Rica or Ghana meets the USA," says Ted Freedman, 16, the book's co-editor. "But what about when Japan plays Brazil or Ukraine meets Saudi Arabia?"      

The name "Socceranto" comes from the word "soccer"--a 19th-century offshoot of the term, "Association Football"--and Esperanto, the best-known previous attempt to devise an international language.      

"Soccer," adds Ignacio van Gelderen, 21, Freedman's co-editor, "has become the most international game in the world and the most globalized industry."      

Socceranto draws most on six core languages--those spoken by the seven nations to have won the World Cup to date: Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, French, German and English.      

It bases Socceranto words on both the names of famous players and on soccer slang, while also coining some brand new words:             

  maradona: a goal scored illegally with the hand. [Derivation: Argentina's
  Diego Maradona who famously scored with his hand in the 1986 World Cup.]

  fliegenfanger: a useless goalkeeper. [Derivation: German for "flycatcher";
  so slang for a poor goalkeeper.]

  rono: a (non-Brazilian) player of Brazilian flair or skill. [Derivation:
  Names of Brazil stars, Ronaldinho and Ronaldo.]

(PHOTO: Design by 13-year-old Turkish schoolgirl Seren Yenilmez. Adidas looked at more than 4,000 entries for Talent 2006: The FIFA World Cup at school.