Surrealist code

Kragen Javier Sitaker, 2016-10-11 (3 minutes)

It occurred to me that you could maybe produce random deep-sounding or epic-sounding surrealist things with a dictionary substitution, which is to say a code, applied to ordinary English sentences, respecting the same parts of speech. For example, take this ordinary sentence by Thomas Ptacek:

If I were in charge of Russia, I would not want to get caught hacking the US.

Tag it by parts of speech and inflection:

If(conj) I(pron) were(v, 1st person singular subjunctive) in(conj) charge(n, plural or mass) of(prep) Russia(proper noun), I(pron) would(modal v taking infinitive) not(adv) want(v, inf) to(prep) get(aux v taking past participle) caught(v, past participle) hacking(v, present participle) the(article) US(noun).

Now, likely, you can make a substitution of other words that are the same part of speech while leaving it nearly grammatical. Some of the words — the ones in closed classes like conjunctions, prepositions, and modal verbs, and the ones that determine the inflection of other verbs — might be best to leave unchanged. For the ones you substitute, you could have a boring choice:

If I occurred in things of English, I could maybe take to have tagged making a sentence.

But maybe if you pick words with great emotional resonance instead, you could end up with something that sounds poetic, surrealist, or deep instead:

If I exalted in stone of suffering, I should deeply have danced flying the blood.

There are lists of “emotionally powerful words”, “trigger words”, “power words”, or “high emotion words” going around for two-bit hustlers to spice up their sales pitches with. If I pick some words at random from one of these lists, I get this instead:

If I banned in insiders of Eva, I would stoically get satisfied controlling the miracle.

Another one quotes Churchill approvingly, “We have before us an ordeal of a most grievous kind.” If I use the uncommon words from the Churchill quote, I get this:

If I struggled in ordeals of God, I would not wage to get surpassed suffering the tyranny.

The list of “317 power words” underneath gives results that are not as evocative, perhaps because the author is a two-bit clickbait hustler and not Winston Churchill, producing this instead:

If I collapsed in meltdowns of IRS, I would not worry to get cautioned smashing the mistake.

If I instead pick an arbitrary page of the Silmarillion for my words, I get this:

If I lay in lands of Beleg, I would not stay to get spoken asking the tree.

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