What is a Shibboleth? 

In WW2, it was common to stomp on a suspicious individuals foot. Most people respond in their native language as they didn't have time to think about it.

The French resistance came up with an interesting shibboleth during WW2 to detect enemy spies. In France there is a very popular piece of poetry learned by children at school, its name is "Le Corbeau et le Renard" by Jean de La Fontaine. Any german spy could learn it easily of course but... The children learn it in a very specific rhythm, it's a bit like they're singing a song. And only in school you'll learn it that way, while foreigners will say the piece without this specific pace. That was a really solid way to spot foreign spies.

A Roman walks into a bar, holds up two fingers then says, “Five beers, please!'”

The entire Danish language is basically one giant shibboleth.

The coolest thing about that slip in Inglorious Bastards is that I had a moment, which gave a person away just by one word. I had some tests with a doctor and she spoke Dutch perfectly. At first I Thought she was Dutch as well. Everything sounded so well the way she pronounced it, but when she said berg (mountain) that G sound was so un-dutch that I immideatly knew she wasnt from here. Everything was pronounced very well and 99.9% of perfect dutch wasnt enough to convince me of that only G sound which gave it away. My mum heard it aswell and asked about. The lady was from Germany or Denmark if I remember correctly, but it always make me think of that Tarantino movie

As a German, I can assure you that "duh" is not the only way we butcher "th". It is possible to train a German to get that right, though. "Squirrel" however will always give us an aneurysm

As a dutch speaker i can say with confidence that in the movie "Soldaat van Oranje". The "scheveningen" and "schoonmoeder" did not make them get through the checkpoint it was the "LUL" at the end that did.

During WW2, my father was a US Army soldier in the 112th Calvary operating in the Philippines. He often pulled guard duty at night during combat. He described the passwords that every GI should know that evening to regain entry after visiting the latrine. All the passwords were always two-word passwords containing "L", a combination that almost any Japanese would pronounce incorrectly. Some of the passwords were: "Lamp Light", "Late Lady" and "Lost Lighter".

I remember a story of infiltrated German soldiers with American uniforms during the battle of the Bulge, caught because they used the word "petrol" instead of "gas"

The Gestapo overheard a linguist remark that German society was run through with shibboleths, and seized him for interrogation as to their identities and whereabouts.

A famous Shibboleth was "Schild en Vriend" during the Battle of the Guilded Spurs in 1302, near Bruges. The Flemish townsmen who rebelled against the French king knew that no French person would be able to pronounce these words.

I loved that scene in Inglorious Bastards. Especially the part about his accent since Michael Fassbender can speak German but due to him being Irish he pronounces some words differently. An SS officer who can pick up on an odd accent just shows how good he is at his job since every state in Germany, especially Bavaria since they have their own terms for stuff, has their own quirks on pronunciation. Not even including Austria or German speaking Swiss.

There's a town in Arizona, Prescott, that most people pronounce "PRESS-cot," but the locals of that town pronounce as "PRESS-kit." When there was a terrible wildfire near there, it got international attention, and you could tell which news sources were local or not depending on how they pronounced thr name of the town.

Makes me think of "squirrel" being a well known word that is difficult for Germans to say in English while the German word for squirrel "Eichhörnchen" is similarly difficult for English speakers to say.

In New Guinea, Australian soldiers would ask those approaching which wharf they'd departed from in Sydney, to which the answer was Woolloomooloo.

Reminds me of the most notorious example of this, the "Parsley Massacre" where Haitians were murdered by President Trujillo's troops, and were often identified by the shibboleth for "parsley" ("perejil" in Dominican Republic Spanish, but "persil" in Haitian French).

That finger thing was funny to me. My French teacher had a story about that. She taught her son to count starting with his thumb. When he made it to kindergarten the teachers there tried to "fix" it, causing all sorts of trouble. Such a silly thing to differentiate us. Honestly starting with your thumb makes more sense.

Finnish used the "höyryjyrä" (steamroller) as a Shibboleth during WWII (and the Winter War) as not only did it contain the native Finnish "Ö" and "Ä" sounds that could be hard to pronounce to non-native speaker, Russians pronounced the hard "J" sound in a distinct way that gave them away (or at least could).

I always found funny that in this scene, the subtle pronunciation and gesture is what sells them and not the fact that they consciously chose to order whysky instead of schnaps.

In the netherlands during ww2 dutch soldiers could also ask for a person to state a sentence with atleast one sch and one g because we’ve learned germans can’t pronounce them. Hence allot of passwords during the night included a sch or g to add another layer of security, if the germans overheard the password they still couldn’t say it due to pronouncing.

The L/R one is actually quite useful. That distinction is actually kind of rare in languages, it just happens to be in several of the most popular at this point in history.

In the 1995 Dutch war series "De Partizanen", a Dutch resistance fighter whistles the tune of the Dutch national anthem before opening the secret forest hatch of the forest cave.

The Dutch/Flemish pronounciation of SCH and G have been used as a shibboleth for centuries because very few foreign speakers can pronounce those. Another example is the use of "Schild en vriend" (shield and friend) by the citizens of Brugge during their revolt against the French in the early 1300's.

“Get to Duh Choppah!” You got Arnold on there. Outstanding!

I love these short but information-packed episodes! I love the content, especially when it's something new I've learned!

To prevent Germans from using Flash to lull Allied troops in for traps, there was a third element. The sign giver had to respond to Thunder with Welcome, just to be sure.

The "three glasses" hand gesture was actually quite clever. I had to try that on myself and I would also order them the way they were ordered. The German way to hold up three fingers was a struggle for me because it didn't feel at all natural and I had to really force it. That was one of my fave scenes from that movie. How something so innocuous could end up costing your life in a firefight was amazing to watch. Using words that the enemy would find hard to pronounce is equally clever. General translation is this but they would pronounce it like that and then get exposed and likely killed or captured. They often say the Devil's in the details.

Johnny your knowledge of war films and ability to pull footage is amazing. Many films I would have never heard about were it not for your videos. I think a video with you showcasing a list of must see foreign Japanese, German, Russian and Korean movies would be great.

My dad said they used lolly as a pass word in the Pacific during WW2.

I remember a tour guide in Cape Canaveral. As I approached him fro behind and heard him talking and heard at once that he was from Frankfurt am Main Germany as I identified at once his very local accent despite his English. I greeted him with a local Frankfurter greeting as he turned around and I saw his jaw falling to the ground. Even he lived since decades there I could hear his very localized accent which he didn't lost a bit. I will never forget his utterly surprised face. Priceless memory. :) During the whole round trip of the space center we talked in our dialect when he was not doing his job as tour guide.

Benedict Cumberbatch's shibboleth = penguins. Which, oddly, makes him even more lovable.

There is a story from the Eastern Front where an advanced German unit no longer had telephone contact with its own headquarters, but had orders to attack at 6 o'clock the next morning together with the whole regiment. Now, however, this attack was called off, of which they knew nothing. Since there was only one radio connection left, which was of course intercepted by the Russians, the radio operator decided to send the message to the captain of the advanced unit not in standard German, but in Swabian. (The Russians allegedly still try to decipher it.) Somewhat similar to the Natives the Americans used as radio operators in the Pacific. (Incidentally, only there, as German ethnologists had researched the languages of the indigenous peoples of the whole of North America in the decades before WW2).

In my family's experience with 9 exchange students, "Squirrel" is universally the most difficult word to pronounce!

In Vietnam, American POWs used "shave and a haircut... Two bits" to determine whether the prisoner on the nextdoor cell was a fellow American, or a plant. Americans would instantly recognise the rhythm of the first half and respond in turn, while planted spies would echo the opening rhythm.

There's also how the Axis, particularly the Germans, intercepted British and American spies by casually saying English greetings with the luring intent to receive a similar pleasing greeting from their targets in return. Case in point, two notable prisoner escapees being intercepted near the end of The Great Escape whilst attempting to board a bus. Oh, and let's face it, Arnie's "duh X" movie moments are narm charm for a lot of us. Same with anime turning words like "Patlabor" and "Dracula" into "Patrabor" and "Dracura". Not exactly sure why.

I'm pretty good at faking accents. It served me well, working as a badguy in nuclear security, if I could capture a radio, I could, and did, "spoof" people in the wrong direction. I mean, if you're in, say, Wisconsin, snatch a radio, and start speaking in a southern accent, the jig is up. But if you can fake an accent, you can misdirect people. When I was in high school, I used to do it for my own amusement. While working at a hardware store, I convinced an English lady that I was originally from "Bradforshire." So far as I know, there is no Bradfordshire, I just made it up. After helping her load her purchases in her vehicle, I felt guilty for deceiving her and came clean. She had a good laugh, told me I really had her going, and gave me a nice tip.

Amazing! I came in contact with this concept many years ago, reading a book about tales of the Middle East. Every time I see in a movie people using this technique to identify foreigners, the story comes back to my mind. I have a Ukrainian friend and she told me their country's soldiers are doing the same to help identify Russians trying to pass as Ukrainians. Shiboleth will never die.

When the Scots Guards attacked Mount Tumbledown in the Falklands they used the password Jimmy. It is easy in English but in Spanish it sounds like Himmy

There was an episode of The Conners where Darlene referred to having broken down on "the 294". Having lived her entire life in northern Illinois, she would NOT use the definite article before a highway number. Sara Gilbert's LA was showing.

The way you pronounced tomato was the difference between life and death in Africa at one point.

Very interesting. Another great one Johnny.

Arnold Schwarzenegger appeared on a few talk shows talking about his work with dialect coaches, the "th" sound in particular. He also described how at a certain point it becomes counterproductive because his accent is part of his brand. though apart from grammar words like "the", "that", and "there/they're/their", the German accent is more likely to be replaced with "s". "we're sinking!" "what are you thinking about?"

I hope no one mistakenly thought this was gonna be a Cthulhu video by the title.

As someone who has always been a little "snooty" about pronunciation and speaking in general, I often scoffed at the different ways my family and friends spoke. However, over the years I had come to appreciate it as a part of our cultural identity and heritage. Being Northern Californians, Oklahomans, and Hispanics my family used a wide range of pronunciations for English words. I have also found that (at least for my part of California) we often tried to use the pronunciations of the word's origin. This creates a sort of Shibboleth of its own. For example, there was a main road that went through town called, Esplanade. Northern Californians pronounce that, "ES-plaan-aide." Also, because it seems to be a Californian shibboleth to add "the" in front of things, locals called it, "The Esplanade." However, whenever we had visitors as close as Nevada or even Oregon, or as far as New York, it seemed everyone had problems pronouncing it. They would pronounce it, "ES-plan-ODD." This was one way for us to tell when someone was from "out of town." Another shibboleth was my city's mispronunciation of the word, "Almond." We called them, "A-Mends." I still roll my eyes at that one. Still, now that I live quite far from Northern California (thank goodness) I miss those little things that will forever attach me to that people. Nobody here puts "The" in front of anything, and I catch myself doing it a lot.

I speak several languages, English is my first but I also speak French and some Vietnamese. I was told in both non-native languages that I have a difficult accent to understand. What you need to do to properly pronounce these words is to practice speaking, often just reading aloud and hyper exaggerating the mouth movements. I learned this from a Vietnamese man who spoke near native level English with an Australian accent. He used the example "three". He said with his Vietnamese accent it sounds like "Free", but it's not, it's TH (as he sticks his tongue out and pulls it back in), REE (as he pulls the corners of his mouth way back). Comical as it looked the pronunciation was perfect. He gave me some examples so I could speak Vietnamese more clearly as well. So the shibboleth plan isn't perfect is what I'm saying. That Vietnamese guy could have passed as an Asian-Australian at least in how he spoke, no problem.

I guess a shibboleth used in Bavaria, Austria and South Tyrol would be "Oachkatzlschwoaf", which means squirrel tail. If youre not a native speaker from that region pronouncing that word correctly is insanely difficult (even for German speakers from outside that region). People sometimes ask non-locals for fun to try to pronounce that word.

Another lesser known and sneaky shibboleth in Dutch is "Het is kutweer" directly translates to "It is c*nt weather" or "It is bad weather". Whilst not difficult to pronounce, there's two layers of security. One is that the person must know that it means bad, not c*nt. And that it's therefore generally used as an amplifier. But the trick is that even if a person knows this, and teaches themselves this. They might think they've cracked it, but that's where the second part comes in. "Kutweer" is pronounced by Dutch people as one word, despite comprising of two. To highlight the subtle different, try saying "It's bad weather" and "It's Badweather". Foreigners will say the first one, Dutch people the second. That small difference consisting of a tiny delay, and difference in intonation of the second syllable "weer" can tip you off.

You forgot about "Lilliputian" in e1 of HOB's The Pacific, first one that came to mind for me

In a book about the Falkland’s War, it said a British unit used passwords beginning with J to give the Argentinians difficulty. My Argentinian Spanish language teacher showed this wasn’t effective. ☺️

my friends and i still use FLASH and THUNDER as our call and response when approaching in games that allow friendly fire like DayZ. only one time ever did a stranger reply "thunder!" without hesitation when we challenged with "FLASH" as they approached. i was so amazed, we let them go lol

I recall a Iwo Jima documentary and the Marine being inteviewed mentioned using passwords at night. He said cars and trees were popular as well as anything with Ls - Cadillac, Lincoln, Maple, Lollipop, etc.

The Parsley Massacre is an rarely mentioned example of a shibnoleth to differentiate to similar looking people. Long story short, there were a bunch of Haitians in the DR. DR soldiers were told to kill them, however the Haitians were often well integrated into the towns. So the soldiers would tell the Haitians to pronounce "parsley" in spanish and the soldier would deduce whether the person was Haitian if they struggled to say it

POINTS for including Soldier of Orange! Very nicely done.

The three beers thing still occasionally gets politicians in trouble in Austria 😂

In the series “TURN,” the is a scene where a colonist/rebel spy is dinning with British red coats. The spy makes the mistake of handling his cutlery like a colonist rather than a British soldier. The Sargent Simcoe character kills him at the dinner table.

Just got round to this. One of your best for being obscure and entertaining! Here in Singapore, there was a video making the rounds years ago. It was a spoof of a dogfighting exercise with the USAF. The RSAF kept losing, until they figured out the Americans were eavesdropping on their comms. They then started talking in Singlish instead and won! 😄 It was a hoot. Regular pilot speak in Singlish!

In Medal of Honor Pacific Assault, you come up to a forward outpost and the sign and counter sign are "Lily pad = Lollipop"

Man that Battle of the Bulge film is hard to look at.

What a chill video. One of those things I didn't know I needed to know. ☑️

I would listen to a Johnny Johnson video on the deadly effectiveness of the water gun and how it changed the modern battlefield.

This was genuinely fascinating! Thanks for the vid!

The phenomenon of confusing 'r' sounds is extremely common, even in English-speaking countries. It is given the name 'rhotacism' and isn't just R-L, but R-W (e.g. fwogs for frogs), etc. etc. For a practical demonstration (or to show up people who make fun of others who have this problem) get people to say the following phrase ten times fast: 'Red Lolly, Yellow Lorry' and have fun.

There was an episode of the West Wing that mentions shibboleths, but your explanation is much better. Thanks Johnny, see ya on the next one.

There's something very "Reservoir Dogs" and "Battle Royale" ( a Japanese movie championed by Tarantino ) about how that scene in "Inglorious Basterds" in the underground tavern ends, with everyone dying in a hail of bullets. Including that poor, unfortunate barmaid.

Watching that scene from Inglorious Bastards and thinking immediatly "dang, he dead" was one of my proudest moments trying to get the hang of living in Germany.

In Utah, back in the Pioneer times when there was a Kill order on Mormons, they named their towns semi normal words and pronounced them crazy so they could tell if someone was an outsider. There's a town called Hurricane, but it's pronounced "Hurr-ih-kin" and a town called Tooele and it's pronounced "Two-ill-ah"

A fun one of these in english is the scots word for lake, loch as in Loch Ness. The right way to say the ch sound is like a soft c sound plus flem but most non-local native english speakers say it with a hard c so it becomes lock instead.

Excellent video, short and sweet no fluff. Most RU-vidrs have me skipping thru their videos to get to the meat

My college German, at one point, was taught by an Old=Country Hungarian. One of our Grad students was an Air Force wife, who'd spent time in Germany. She consistently pronounced "Ich" as 'ish." Dr. Javor almost instantly asked, "Where did you pick That up?" "U S Air Force Base in Barvaria." "ah, Yes." and we went on from there. Don't fret, Johnny - you do pretty good.

In the 16th and 17th centuries England faced a growing problem: a shortage of wood. Its population was expanding, which meant more homes to build and more fireplaces, stoves and ovens to cook. It was also when Britain began to reach across the sea on wooden ships (which often got eaten by shipworms) and were armed with cannons. A ship of the line would have more than 60 cannons, each a multi-tonne mass of cast iron shooting spheres of cast iron. Casting all that iron required fuel. Forests were clear cut for firewood and farms, but demand increased. As such, people switched from burning wood to burning Coal, which England has a lot of. At first, they mined surface deposits. Then they dug deeper. But as they did so, miners would often face the problem of flooding. Mines could be pumped out, but doing so required a lot of time with horse. As such, a natural philosopher named Thomas Savery created a steam powered pump in 1698. Latter, in 1712 Thomas Newcomen invented the Newcomen Atmospheric Engine, which used steam to push up a piston and cooled it down by spritzing some cool water into the piston chamber, which reduced the pressure and caused the piston to go down. The Newcomen Engine was better and became the standard of mine engines in England for the Next Sixty years, even though it was by it’s very nature an inefficient coal hungry machine that was only really good for pumping out mines. Then Scottish inventor James Watt would refine the design between 1765-75. The Watt Steam Engine made use of High Pressure Steam and a reciprocating mechanism to discharge it, converting the thermal energy of the steam into kinetic energy that rotated a wheel. The Watt Steam Engine was useful in a much wider range of applications, notably factories far away from rivers and other forms of moving water. The system would be further refined the early 19th century by Richard Trevithick, who would among other things for a special application for use in coal mines. An Engine which could be hitched to a railcar and provide from it’s Location along said line the force to provide Motion. Locomotives would be mostly confined to Coal Mines for their first few decades until 1826 with the completion of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway.

The Friesian "buter, brea en griene tsiis; wa't dat net sizze kin is gjin oprjochte Fries" is the one that pops into my head.

Isaac Asimov wrote a short story where a German spy got caught by knowing the 3rd verse of the Star Spangled Banner. Most Americans don't know there was a second verse, let alone a 3rd!😅😁😁 Full disclosure..neither did I until I read about this story!🤦😦😀

A very famous shibboleth in Switzerland is the word "Chuchichästli". To easy? Try this: "Chlini Chäschüächli us äm Chuchichästli chlauä." (To steal little cheese cakes from the little kitchen cabinet.)

In the films "A Midnight Clear" (1992) there is also such a checkpoint scene with Ethan Hawke in the 1944 bulge battle. And I think Harrison Ford had to say apple pie to a Resistance woman in "Hannover Street" (1979)

Gotta admit, this was pretty interesting. I like that you used the scene from Inglorious Basterds too.

Another great video Jhonny! Coencidently I just watched Horsefeathers before watching this.👍

I remember in 2009's Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, there's a part where the Rangers give the callsign "Star" with the response being "Texas" because the Russians would pronounce it as "Tekhas" (In the Cyrillic alphabet it would be "Техас").

Great video. I know your channel doesn’t focus on this but during the American Civil War, some place names were changed as a form of Shibboth. One example near where I grew up is Purcellville, VA, which today is said as Perceval because of the Shibboth. Another is Buena Vista, VA, which is vocalized as Buna Vista.

What a cool video! Super specific concept but very important piece of war. Awesome!

The use of ''thunder'' as a code word was pretty clever indeed. Most Germans have problems pronouncing ''th'' and pronounce it either as ''d'' or as ''z''. So, ''thunder'' sounds like ''zunder'' or you hear often Germans pronounce ''this'' as ''zis''.

“Some people might call pop ‘soda’” As a midwesterner I appreciated that one 🤣

Subbed. Very interesting channel. Thank you.

Chicko Marx grew up around Italian immigrants. People think it was a joke but his accent was spot on.

I think .gif is a shibboleth chosen by skynet. The correct pronunciation is “convert to .png”

Always thought Shibboleth was a Lovecraftian nightmare

Belvior forest park in Belfast was used to identify spies. Because if you weren't a native speaker you would pronounce it as "Bel-voir" but the correct pronunciation is "Be-ver".

The men of Ephraim were angry because Jephthah didn't invite them to fight with the Ammonites, but the fact was that they had originally refused to help. Jephtah was victorious, and the men of Ephraim were ashamed but enraged at the same time, so they engaged him in battle. Jephtah got together the men of Gilead and took the passages of Jordan River. The men of Ephraim had insulted the men of Gilead and called them "refugees" because it was one of the cities of refuge where unintentional criminals would flee to escape punishment. The men of Ephraim were defeated and couldn't return through the passages without detection and subsequently getting killed. The Ephraimites, due to an innate articulation impairment, couldn't frame to pronounce the word "Shi," which comes out as "Si." 42,000 men of Ephraim, standing in line, one thinking he could pronounce it better than the one before him, despite the fact that it was an innate articulation issue, were killed. There's a tribe in the western part of Nigeria, called Ibadan, that have this innate articulation impairment as well: "Chiken" is "Sicken", "Show" is "Sow"; "Cushing chair" is "Cusing sair" etc... Just like the Ephraimites. Judges12.

Good videos👍all presented in a easy and precise way, thanks!

During the Battle of the Bulge an American checkpoint challenged Monty and asked who won the world series to which he obviously had no knowledge, and neither did many Americans. So when he could not answer he was he was taken prisoner. When Eisenhower heard the Monty was being held prisoner he laughed. Well at least Monty was being the leader of his men on the battlefield and not hiding in a cellar like Ike.

When I worked in Germany we'd use the comical shibboleth "alles uber der platz" which is a literal translation of British slang suggesting that something is disordered, but which Germans were bemused by.

Tank you yohhnny

I watched inglorious bastards the other day and thought the 3 finger sign that gave away the allies was over the top. Now I understand this observation much better!

If Danes ever had a "shibboleth" I bet it would be "rødgrød med fløde".

In Ernst Jünger's "In Stahlgewittern", he explains a challenge-response being "Lüttje - Lage!" representing a special drink combo from the regiment's Hannover origin (a light beer and a schnapps drunk together "simultaneously" [to get back to the video]).

Nice history

"A doctor who cuts you open when you're sick" is one of my favorite lines.

The Japanese L and R are blended it’s really interesting that Lilly can be Rirri. Definitely cool

enjoyed this video and how it wasn't dragged out 30mins long. good job

There is also a famoys one with the Japanese. They distinguished outsuders with つ sound, which is very similar to German's z (like Panzer's Z rather than English's dirty S but like TS) . Korean and Chinese do not have this, then they used this.

Benny Hill did a great skit sort of on this topic about a couple of downed German flyers trying to get a cold one at a village pub.