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Comment by gwern | Hacker News Reader

For those who don't get it, you need to listen to the audio. The idea is that this is "Little Red Riding Hood", but written in other English words which have the same rhythm/intonation but not the same phonetic sound otherwise ('ladle' is not a homonym of 'little', it just has the same stress on the first sound); after a while, it will start to make sense.

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This is also explained in the footer, though confused readers might not reach it:

     What's Going On?
    
    This story, believe it or not, is the very familiar fable of Little Red Riding Hood. This curious version was written in 1940 by a professor of French named H. L. Chace, who wanted to show his students that intonation - that is, the melody of a language - is an integral part of its meaning. The words here are all common English words, but not the ones you'd expect to tell the story of Little Red Riding Hood.

After reading the explanation, I was able to decode at least the first sentence:

"Wants pawn term, dare worsted ladle gull hoe lift wetter murder inner ladle cordage" -> "Once upon a time, there was a little girl who lived with her mother in a little cottage"

H. L. Chace seems to have been a nonrhotic speaker.

If you do the Swedish Chef accent while reading this it makes it easier to understand.

I actually find it easier to decipher from the written version, rather than the audio.

I think it also depends on the accent you read this in. The Australian accent makes this very difficult to decipher. The audio sounds much closer to the original.

This Aussie thanks you. I equipped my best-worst "deep south" accent and it suddenly all makes sense.

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