frankie

from knitted codes to whistled

dialects, secret languages have taken

many forms throughout history.

WORDS EMMA DO

undercover

chit-chat

INVISIBLE INK Often tied to espionage, war and power struggles,
invisible ink has a long and storied history. Take the humble lemon,
for instance, which has long been used to transfer secret messages.
A note written in its acidic juice will disappear when dry, only to
reveal itself once heat is applied to either side of the paper. The ol’
lemon juice ink-plus-open flame trick was used to deliver messages
between desert towns across the Arab world from 600CE, right up
until World War I. Most infamous is the case of the WWI Lemon
Juice Spies – a German immigrant and an English baker who joined
forces to report British troop movements to the Germans using the
innocuous citrus fruit. As decades passed, governments devoted
more resources to creating new (fruit-free) ways of sending covert
messages, many details of which are still hidden away in classified
documents. What we do know is that spies have employed everything
from high-tech chemicals to bodily fluids to conceal messages
of political importance (as you may have learnt from the movies,
saliva and semen show up under UV light). But these techniques
haven’t always had such sombre uses – Ancient Roman poet Ovid
encouraged folks penning love letters to express their desires in
invisible inks, as well.

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LADY-ONLY SCRIPT For the women of 19th-century rural China,
formal education was a rarity, thanks to a largely patriarchal
society. And yet, in Jiangyong County in the Hunan Province,
generations of enterprising women taught each other a special
handwritten script. Nüshu (which literally translates to ‘women’s
script’) was derived from Chinese characters, and allowed local
ladies to write stealthy letters to one another if they married and
moved away from home. It also equipped them to write poetry

and, in some cases, their own autobiographies. The origins of the

script are still hotly debated, but scholars all agree: men could

not read it. Nearly all gents in the area knew of Nüshu’s existence,

but simply did not care to sit down and learn. (Because who cares

what women want to natter on about, right?) Apparently, Japan

did – they banned the script during their invasion of China in the

1930s, for fear that it would be used to send covert messages to

their enemies. In the latter part of the 20th century, girls stopped

learning the lady-only language of their own accord, presumably

due to growing rates of standard literacy across the country.

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HAND SYMBOLS Exclusive clubs and secret signals have always

gone hand in hand. When it comes to flashing a tell-tale gesture,

though, perhaps most notorious are those of rival Los Angeles

gangs the Bloods and Crips. Two of the most active criminal groups

of the ‘80s and ‘90s, hand signs became a recognisable part of each

side’s identity – as important as the colour codes that differentiated

a Crip (blue) from a Blood (red). ‘Throwing signs’ was a silent way

to let those around you know where you were from and what you

were doing in the area; conversely, flashing these finger formations

at rival gang members signalled the start of a fight. Hand symbols

also played an important role for the Hong Kong triads – aka

organised crime syndicates – with different shapes representing

a member’s rank in the group. Using only one hand, a triad member

could communicate complex and super-specific hierarchies, such

as ‘official who has committed a serious crime’, ‘ordinary member’

and ‘enforcer’. If you’re curious, there’s a whole canon of Hong Kong

cinema that illustrates the inner workings of the triads – just don’t

go flashing the hand signs on the street.

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