Purrieties and language varieties

Meowza hoomans,

“A purriety is a dialect with a purr and a meow. “ (Meow Factor, linguist, 2025)

With this take on the famous quote by linguist Max Wienreich “A language is a dialect with an army and a navy”, we are diving straight into this month’s topic of our newsletter: the purrieties, aka purr language varieties in cat-related digital spaces. And let’s keep our fingers crossed that we’ll not be drowning in the abstract definitions to adher to and the scientific decisions to take when we apply all that to our beloved purr language varieties.

🐈‍⬛ This month's newsletter has been co-written by Wicht, Purr Reviewer 2, who forcefully insisted on contributing. [see author picture below]

🌿 Get your catnip ready and enjoy your short trip into the Cativerse.

Purrieties

“A purriety is a dialect with a purr and a meow. “ (Meow Factor, linguist, 2025)

😸 Purrieties are real, even though some linguistic purists (not purrists) might disagree. Purrieties are online dialects [Check: “online dialects”] found in cat-related digital spaces. While they do not have an army and a navy to differentiate them from other language varieties, purrieties have purrs, meows, paws, and even claws.

🐈‍⬛ The word “purriety” came into existence as a pun on “(language) variety”, which is a common term in sociolinguistics. When you are taking a sociolinguistic view on cats on social media, a meowlogism like that is just begging to be used. Sociolinguistics by the way looks at how language and society are connected. [Check: “language and society”]

🐾 And believe it or not (well, we believe it), there is more than one purriety out there in the digital realm of cats. You have the meowlogisms and you have other catspeak varieties [Check: “language variety”]. When you follow cats online, you have certainly noticed the different ways cat account holders communicate. It all depends on the community they are in. [Check: “community”]

😻 In the sample of the monthly meowlogisms below, you will see (at least) three different language varieties: there’s Italian, there are meowlogisms, and there are individual catspeak varieties.

🐱Catspeak is similar to LOLspeak, but it is not the same. LOLspeak is used on memes and has clear rules in grammar and spelling. [check: LOLspeak] Yet, in the cat accounts on social media, each account holder uses their own way of communicating, they post their own cats and not memes. That is why we are dealing here with individual catspeak purrieties.

🙀And of course, we have the contribution of a real cat:

<»»>a MM´ÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜil

floofstersÜÜÜÜÜÜÜ+Ä

A Sample of the Monthly Meowlogisms

Here are some of the meowlogisms and other catspeak collected in the last month. As per linguistic conventions, the meowphemes making the word feline are written in <>.

Some words are easy to guess, others are more difficult. Let me know if you need a solution to what the original word actually is. 😸

• il condomicio <micio>

• Nosfegato <gato>

• conservapawry <paw>

• efurrpawdy <fur> <paw>

• Catnada <cat>

• Catlateral Damage: digitally remeowstered <cat> <meow>

• compurrletely <purr>

• purrformance by Freddy Purrcury <purr>

• floofsters <floof>

• Theez are nisce flowers and all butt this is soppozed to e CA'AT accownt whare is tha ca'at i demand accountability!

• Weel dun. Gud catting heer!

• trowbak satorday: me as babey

• toebeance

• houmins

• Box Apartment

• #KittyLoafMonday

• #TongueOutTuesday

• #TunaTuesday

• #CatboxSunday

• #CatbagSunday

🙀 Need help? Ask me!

njmth. 😸 Fank mew furry much for reading 566666666666666666666666666666666666, and looking forward to dispensing my 🌿linguistic catnip to your inbox 📦 next month.

📝 Drop me a line if you have a question 🤔

➡️ Feel free to forward this newsletter to anyone who might be interested in cats and language.