Pilish

“Yes, I want a small breakfast of banana bread and apple fritters, expensive alcohol, improving all my old features”

That is something I just wrote in Pilish.

What is Pilish? you may be asking.

Well, Pilish is writing in a way that the number of letters in each word corresponds to a digit of π, in proper order.

To recap, the fist 20 digits of π are:

3.14159 26535 89793 23846….

If you double check the line I wrote above, you’ll see that, yes, it is written in authentic Pilish.

Pilish has been around since the early 20th century. One early example, one much much more witty than my somewhat average example, was written by Physicist Sir James Jean:

“How I need a drink, alcoholic in nature, after the heavy lectures involving quantum mechanics.”

Now that’s a great Pilish line!

I encourage you today, Pi Day 2020, to try your hand at the Pilishtic dialect, especially now that we’ve all been confined to small groups within our homes to save mankind from the superflu. One man, I’ve read, has even written an entire book in Pilish, and there is a sub- sub- subgenre of poetry called Pi-ku, which uses the standard 5-7-5 syllabic pattern of the traditional haiku, but word length must follow the digits in Pi.

Go ahead and try it! It’s less restrictive than a crossword puzzle and more creative than sudoku.

Happy π Day everyone!