"Senga Niprut" (actually Agnes Turpin of Baltimore) appears with her "interpreter," Harriet Haagman of Helsinki. Everyone is led to believe she's speaking Finnish, but it's actually backwards English.
There was an old lady on David Letterman who could do this. They had a reel-to-reel recorder sitting next to her and taped her speaking backwards, and when the tape was played in reverse you could understand every word! The lady pronounced words phonetically rather than spelling-wise, so the reversed recording sounded nearly perfect.
That was great! I used to be able to do that a little back when I was in college. It took me quite a while to think about each sentence though before I could say anything. It's remarkable how much backwards English sounds like Finnish.
Like others have mentioned, I saw a video once of a man who could sing backwards and when reversed you could tell what he was singing. Amazing talent. I suppose he must have listened to a recording backwards and memorized the sounds to make. As an aside, OMG, were Betsy Palmer and Bess Myerson gorgeous or what?
The host should have let the young lady speaks the names to be replayed in reverse because that's what she DOES VERY WELL and they would have sounded much better than his attempts.
How fun!! I loved this one! The host should have had Agnes say something backwards to be recorded. That was silly that he did it himself. She's the guest after all. 🙄 I don't really care for him, but I love the show.
And also rather than say all those names, I would have loved some questions to her -- how old were you when you started doing this? How quickly can you do it usually? Do you have to think about it or does it come easily? This to me is a sign of a very high IQ in her and I wish they had pursued asking about her brain and this skill rather than doing what he did with the names.
@@caroltz8220 I totally agree! I don't want to hear him saying the panel's names backwards! And did the one guy on the end actually say something in Finnish, or something in backwards English? They never commented on that!
@Projekt Kobra yeah no hobos and peasants at all. Every single person was a milionaire. No black wuarters cinese gangs only prosperity. Pls read a history book.
@@vojvoda_vukget your nasty ass mind out of the gutter. Just because someone compliment someone else, it doesn’t mean anything beyond just genuine kindness. This is why I don’t allow random dudes to compliment myself nor do I give compliments because delusional people take shit out of context.
Or if it was all just a sham :P I mean like when she sad "madam" and then the host pretty much called out her BS saying it wouldn't be said the same even though it's spelled the same.
@@caroltz8220 I'm not saying it wasn't impressive. I'm saying im to lazy to play them back to see. Although with technology today we could very well test it to see if she was lying. but still, i call BS on it. and the one example of "madam" it confused her so i'll give her benifit of the doubt. But she said it wrong. Madam is not madaM the host mansplained to her how she screwed up.
@@johndorian4078 He wasn't "calling out her BS," he was pointing out the difference between what she was doing and simply playing the spoken form backwards. You added a false context to the show. What she did was in no way a "sham."
I love how the host said that the girl was likely young enough to call her by her first name. I miss the etiquette if olden days, particularly when referring to people by a title and their surname. There are many older folks who don't like strangers calling them by their first name. It seems disrespectful to them.
I agree. I have been called "Sir" for about two decades. Sure, I could complain; but I think it's a compliment. I like to think that I've earned the title.
I have a very common first name. A popular boys name in the 1980's. I usually don't respond to my first name much out in public and would actually respond to my last name since it is not as popular. I dont like to be called Mr., sir, or a facsimile there of.
I do not like strangers calling me by my first name. Especially when they do not even introduce themselves. I do not like someone the age of my granddaughter calling me sweety. I do not like to be patronized.
This is one of the best shows that I've seen on this program so far. This is awesome. There's no way I can speak backwards not in sentences and phrases like she did. I can say my name backwards LOL but it would sound like what he's about to play
My first language is spelled phonetically, every letter is always pronounced the same, so if you read the reversed letters and record it, it will come out right 😁
I downloaded the video and reversed it with ffmpeg. You are correct. She isn't speaking backward. She is visualizing the spelling of the word, and then pronouncing the backward spelling. So her words are wrong for the same reason "Moore" backward was wrong. Technically, it's only slightly more difficult to do than speaking Pig Latin.
@@YY4Me133 Your description was spot on. I just tested your theory, and found it to be correct. I wrote a poem that when read aloud and recorded, says the same poem in reverse. It took listening to a LOT of backward speaking to nail that down, and nothing she said reminded me of backward speaking. What she did was essentially a type of pig latin spelling manipulation that's quite easy to run in your head. Real backward sentences take a LOT more work because even the accent changes everything.
@@KarstenJohansson Real backward speaking would require one to listen to audio played backward to know what it sounds like. I don't think that anyone could do that in their head.
In the 1970s there was a German lady who appeared on television shows who could speak backwards phonetically. She had a specially modified biderectional tape recorder (with glitter on the spools! :) so she could present what she just said to the audience. She also did songs, poems and such.
RIP Miss Turpin. You can see her obituary if you Google "Agnes Gertrude Turpin obituary. " She was 72 but you can tell it is the same person in this video.
I looked it up. The woman in the obit was born in 1947, and her maiden name was Ferrell; she married Broderick Turpin. This Agnes Turpin from Baltimore wouldn't have been married at age 13, when this show aired. So I don't think it's the same person.
@@footofjuniper8212 -- I disagree. Read the "Share a Memory" in her obituary. They called her Gertrude. She was born in 1947 which would make her 13 in 1960 when this episode of "I've Got a Secret" aired. I can understand why you think she had to have been married at age 13. On the program she was introduced as Senga Niprut, which is Agnes Turpin spelled backwards. Her husband was Broderick Turpin who died in 2012. Maybe there is a mistake in her obituary which I'm still trying to figure out. If you look at her photo on the obituary page, you will see that she has features that closely resemble the girl in the TV episode; especially her eyes and mouth. So I stick by my assertion that the 13 year old in this episode and the Agnes Gertrude Turpin in the obituary are one and the same person.
@@Dr.Pepper001 So you're saying she used her future married name at the time of this recording? That should have been her secret. They'd have never figured it out.
Very Interesting. Just finished watching this video and wonder if this girl now a women is still living. I'm from Maryland Westminster to be exact. A small country town 30 miles Northwest of Baltimore. I wonder was she just a teen when she appeared on IGaS or did she just look young for her age, and since they were talking about English, being from Maryland you say Marylind. Just like people form PA pronounce Lancaster Co Lankister Co. I been around who people from that county and when someone says it the other way they're quick to say it's LankISter not Lancaster.
Wowwwwwww! Is rmthus an old tv show that both my mom & Nana absolutely loved! I can remember this show vaguely as a little girl, laying on the floor watching it with my baby brother! How my mom loved her game shows( watched them in the hospital even until she sadly passed away on Oct. 27th, 2017 ( How I miss you my “little mommy”, I called her for a tiny thing only 4’8! Loved her & my Nana so dearly!) but this show was a favorite of hers. I think it was an exciting premise from what I remember fur guests “had a secret you had to guess!” My mom & Nana loved the guest host too. I was so little but I really liked him too! What a great memory this was & love seeing it here!♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️
Looking at the dates of these comments, it is interesting that "The Algorithm" recommended this 10 year old video to so many people so recently. (Or not...)
I never thought of trying to speak English backwards but I thought my grandfather was awesome because he could say the alphabet backwards in under 3 seconds.
this is like the swedish bookstore scene in the film "top secret". that was filmed backward, saying exactly was the lines were, but in reverse order, while they walked backward. when it was played backwards, it sounded swedish.
Nope…. You are definitely not old! The 60’s & 70’s are the “ new “ 40’s & 50’s I read somewhere ha!🤣You have an excellent memory on top if it, so you are wayyyyy ahead of so many others, I need to add! Take Care!
Instead of the host trying to do it, why didn't they just reverse the tape of the girl doing it? For all we know she could have been speaking Martian! :)
He is aware it would sound ridiculous and in a way undermine her talent. Even when she speaks backwards, her intonation is as if she is speaking forward. Same as how the announcer sounds weird trying to pronounce the names backward, he uses intonation as if he was saying them forward. So they end up sounding weird. Interestingly, there ARE spoken languages that use a reverse intonation structure to English. I was a language trainer and funny enough, this has come up before in discussing secrets to ancient languages where it would seem some ancient people were aware and deliberate about doing this with their 'native' language. Perhaps the bibles statement on God mixing up the languages in Babel has some merit to it after all xD
@@Synconntez I appreciate what you say but how does anyone know she was speaking English backwards? We only have their word for that! The point I was making is that the host was attempting it phonetically after probably trying to do it a very short time. If they'd reversed the tape of the girl, we could have judged for ourselves and if it was her 'talent', why would it have sounded ridiculous?! I do know my mother and her long-standing friendship with a school girl friend of hers created their own language by putting egg in between syllables ... she could almost speak it fluently and they did it so nobody else would understand them. :) When I was about 10 or 11, she used to amuse my brother and I with it and we even tried to learn a bit of it. For example, if she wanted to say treble stamps, it would be treggle beggle stegamps! lol
@@NickJay Oh I see what you mean. To be honest, I also wanted to hear her tape reversed. I actually did have the same wish as you but for different reasons. I just believed she could do it, but I wanted to confirm what I knew about language enunciation and intonation from hearing her tape reversed. Hmmm...am I gullible because I just trust they weren't lying to me? LOL
From the way she said Finnish backwards, it would appear she spells the letter backwards [H-sinn-if] instead of using the verbal eng. pronounciation [Sh-ini-f]. The host example of madam kinda proved the same purpose, the girl said her version [Madam->madaM] while the host insisted on the verbal version of it [Ma-dum -> Mud-am]. So her way of speaking would have not sounded good in forward because she would use the spelling, but english does not abide by its own spellings (rough said verbally becomes Ruf, spelled backwards Hgu-or) Im not sure about the longer sentences she used, but from these few shorter examples she uses the backwards spelling, but spoken english doesnt, thus it would sound nothing like it. But I dont how she didnt give it away, and succedded in making it sound fluend and almost passed for another language.
@@Synconntez I believed what they said about her, too. I thought it might be because they didn't have the technology back then to broadcast video in reverse but then the host showed they did, it simply made no sense at all!
Of course it doesn't work when you do it backwards; she's not doing it based on phenomes, but a reconstruction of pronunciation based on spelling. It'd be a lot better if she did it phonetically: finnish ==> Shinnif instead of hsinnif and so forth. Still amazing either way, of course.
Yes, it would be much better with phonemes, I agree. The host muddled it all by giving some examples that were (half) done that way. I think he didn’t really understand the difference. Also, it seems like she was just doing each word separately rather than her whole answers.
@@icturner23 Exactly right. There are people who can do it phonetically so it comes out right if you reverse the tape but that is not what the young girl was doing.
@@presto709 you're prob right. Can the nd in land and ng in song even be pronounced in reverse???? And when she reversed the word Finnish, her reversal had three syllables. She said it twice with 3 syllables each time. Listened at 50% speed and she said h see nif. Not the h sound, she said the letter h like she was saying the alphabet. H see nif???? Should be shi nif. Wonder if she's delusional.
"And now, a man who only speaks the beginnings of words." "Goo eve" "And how are you today?" "Fi tha yo" "And is it true you only speak the beginnings of words?" "Yes, that's true." "Hey, wait a minute. You just spoke complete words there." "Oh, I'm sorry, I should have explained. I make an exception during the third and fourth lines of every conversation." "So the next thing you say, you will return to only speaking the beginnings of words, right?" "Ye tha ri." "Well, we have a surprise second guest we would like you to meet- someone who only speaks the ends of words." "Ood ning."
Seems to me, that if you wanted to accurately pronounce a word backwards, you would have to do it phonetically and not by spelling, if you wanted to play it back and it be recognizable...
those were the days. family shows that whole families used to watch. talking backwards no doubt a hit. 1960, we all considered a new decade. the old world changed.
I think she was speaking words the way they would sound if you had reversed the letters, which is different than verbalizing the sounds in reverse. So, for example, the word time would be emit, which is different than a reverse recording, which would sound closer to "might"(but still different). So I think you would need to write down what she says first, then reverse the letters.
Tomorrow Never Knows is an even greater trip. I played that backwards. Half of Lennon's singing was backwards, so after reversing it, I knew what he was saying. Music is pretty good (Beatles improved!).
I have to disagree with Mr. Moore about reverse English. It isn't the spelling that determines how it sounds, but how it's pronounced (as he pointed out about the word "madam" backwards).
The problem with this is that the host typically gives everything away by "clarifying" an ambiguous question. Pretty lame. This one seems OK but most are given away by the host.
And as an English Speaking Comanche I can tell you I Speak English backwards and Forwards. I look you in the Face and Speak English Forwards and turn my back to You to speak English backwards. And I don't Speak A Single Word of Comanche .. .
