Shibboleth

A shibboleth is any custom or tradition, usually a choice of phrasing or even a single word, that distinguishes one group of people from another. Shibboleths have been used throughout history in many societies as passwords, simple ways of self-identification, signaling loyalty and affinity, maintaining traditional segregation, or protecting from real or perceived threats.

Origin
The term originates from the Hebrew word (שִׁבֹּלֶת), which means the part of a plant containing grain, such as the ear of a stalk of wheat or rye;  or less commonly (but arguably more appropriately) "flood, torrent".

The modern use derives from an account in the Hebrew Bible, in which pronunciation of this word was used to distinguish Ephraimites, whose dialect used a different first consonant. The difference concerns the Hebrew letter shin, which is now pronounced as (as in shoe). In the Book of Judges, chapter 12, after the inhabitants of Gilead under the command of Jephthah inflicted a military defeat upon the invading tribe of Ephraim (around 1370–1070 BC), the surviving Ephraimites tried to cross the River Jordan back into their home territory, but the Gileadites secured the river's fords to stop them. To identify and kill these Ephraimites, the Gileadites told each suspected survivor to say the word shibboleth. The Ephraimite dialect resulted in a pronunciation that, to Gileadites, sounded like sibboleth. In Judges 12:5–6 in the King James Bible, the anecdote appears thus (with the word already in its current English spelling): "And the Gileadites took the passages of Jordan before the Ephraimites: and it was so, that when those Ephraimites which were escaped said, Let me go over; that the men of Gilead said unto him, Art thou an Ephraimite? If he said, Nay;

Then said they unto him, Say now Shibboleth: and he said Sibboleth: for he could not frame to pronounce it right. Then they took him, and slew him at the passages of Jordan: and there fell at that time of the Ephraimites forty and two thousand."

Modern use
In modern English, a shibboleth can have a sociological meaning, referring to any in-group word or phrase that can distinguish members from outsiders. It is also sometimes used in a broader sense to mean jargon, the proper use of which identifies speakers as members of a particular group or subculture.

In information technology, a shibboleth is a community-wide password that enables members of that community to access an online resource without revealing their individual identities. The origin server can vouch for the identity of the individual user without giving the target server any further identifying information. Hence the individual user does not know the password that is actually employed – it is generated internally by the origin server – and so cannot betray it to outsiders.

The term can also be used pejoratively, suggesting that the original meaning of a symbol has in effect been lost and that the symbol now serves merely to identify allegiance, being described as "nothing more than a shibboleth". In 1956, Nobel Prize-laureate economist Paul Samuelson applied the term "shibboleth" in works including Foundations of Economic Analysis to an idea for which "the means becomes the end, and the letter of the law takes precedence over the spirit." Samuelson admitted that "shibboleth" is an imperfect term for this phenomenon.

Examples


Shibboleths have been used by different subcultures throughout the world at different times. Regional differences, level of expertise, and computer coding techniques are several forms that shibboleths have taken.

The legend goes that before the Battle of the Golden Spurs in May 1302, the Flemish slaughtered every Frenchman they could find in the city of Bruges, an act known as the Matins of Bruges. They identified Frenchmen based on their inability to pronounce the Flemish phrase schild en vriend "shield and friend", or possibly gilden vriend "friend of the Guilds". However, many Medieval Flemish dialects did not contain the cluster sch- either (even today's Kortrijk dialect has sk-), and Medieval French rolled the r just as Flemish did.

There is an anecdote in Sicily that, during the rebellion of the Sicilian Vespers in 1282, the inhabitants of the island killed the French occupiers who, when questioned, could not correctly pronounce the Sicilian word cìciri "chickpeas".

Following Mayor Albert's Rebellion in 1312 Kraków, Poles used the Polish language shibboleth Soczewica, koło, miele, młyn ("Lentil, wheel, grinds (verb), mill) to distinguish the German-speaking burghers. Those who could not properly pronounce this phrase were executed.

"Bûter, brea, en griene tsiis; wa't dat net sizze kin, is gjin oprjochte Fries" ("Butter, rye bread and green cheese, whoever cannot say that is not a genuine Frisian") was a phrase used by the Frisian Pier Gerlofs Donia during a Frisian rebellion (1515–1523). Ships whose crew could not pronounce this properly were usually plundered and soldiers who could not were beheaded by Donia himself.

In Japan during the 1923 Kantō Massacre, vigilantes attempted to identify ethnic Koreans by making them say "five yen and 50 sen" (which they felt was hard for Koreans to pronounce). People who failed to recite the shibboleth to their satisfaction were killed; among those were ethnic Japanese people who spoke dialects and Chinese people.

In October 1937, the Spanish word for parsley, perejil, was used as a shibboleth to identify Haitian immigrants living along the border in the Dominican Republic. The Dominican dictator, Rafael Trujillo, ordered the execution of these people. It is alleged that between 20,000 and 30,000 individuals were murdered within a few days in the Parsley Massacre, although more recent scholarship and the lack of evidence such as mass graves puts the actual estimate closer to between 1,000 and 12,168.

During the German occupation of the Netherlands in World War II, the Dutch used the name of the seaside town of Scheveningen as a shibboleth to tell Germans from Dutch ("Sch" in Dutch is analyzed as the letter "s" combined with the digraph "ch", producing the consonant cluster, while in German "Sch" is read as the trigraph "sch", pronounced , closer to "sh" sound in English).

Some American soldiers in the Pacific theater in World War II used the word lollapalooza as a shibboleth to challenge unidentified persons, on the premise that Japanese people would often pronounce both letters L and R as rolled Rs. In Oliver Gramling's Free Men Are Fighting: The Story of World War II (1942) the author notes that, in the war, Japanese spies would often approach checkpoints posing as American or Filipino military personnel. A shibboleth such as "lollapalooza" would be used by the sentry, who, if the first two syllables come back as rorra, would "open fire without waiting to hear the remainder". Another sign/countersign used by the Allied forces: the challenge/sign was "flash", the password "thunder", and the countersign "Welcome". This was used during D-Day during World War II due to the rarity of the voiceless dental fricative (th-sound) and voiced labial–velar approximant (w-sound) in German.

During The Troubles in Northern Ireland, use of the name Derry or Londonderry for the province's second-largest city was often taken as an indication of the speaker's political stance, and as such frequently implied more than simply naming the location. The pronunciation of the name of the letter H is a related shibboleth, with Catholics pronouncing it as "haitch" and Protestants often pronouncing the letter differently.

During the Black July riots of Sri Lanka in 1983, many Tamils were massacred by Sinhalese youths. In many cases these massacres took the form of boarding buses and getting the passengers to pronounce words that had at the beginning (like  'bucket') and executing the people who found it difficult.

In Australia and New Zealand, the words "fish and chips" are often used to highlight the difference in each country's short-i vowel sound [ɪ] and asking someone to say the phrase can identify which country they are from. Australian English has a higher forward sound [i], close to the y in happy and city, while New Zealand English has a lower backward sound [ɘ], a slightly higher version of the a in about and comma. Thus, New Zealanders hear Australians say "feesh and cheeps", while Australians hear New Zealanders say "fush and chups". A long drawn out pronunciation of the names of the cities Brisbane and Melbourne rather than the typically Australian rapid "bun" ending is a common way for someone to be exposed as new to the country. Within Australia, what someone calls "devon", or how they name the size of beer they order can often pinpoint what state they are from, as both of these have varied names across the country.

In Canada, the name of Canada's second largest city, Montreal, is pronounced by English-speaking locals. This contrasts with the typical American pronunciation of the city as.

In the United States, the name of the state "Nevada" comes from the Spanish nevada, meaning "snow-covered". Nevadans pronounce the second syllable with the "a" as in "trap" while some people from outside of the state can pronounce it with the "a" as in "palm". Although many Americans interpret the latter back vowel as being closer to the Spanish pronunciation, it is not the pronunciation used by Nevadans. Likewise, the same test can be used to identify someone unfamiliar with southwest Missouri, as the city of Nevada, Missouri is pronounced with the "a" as in "cape".

During the Russo-Ukrainian War (2014–present), Ukrainians have used the word (a type of Ukrainian bread) to distinguish between Ukrainians and Russians.

In New York City, how one pronounces the name of Houston Street in Manhattan is a common differentiatior between tourists and those who live in the city. Tourists tend to pronounce it similarly to the name of the city in Texas, while the New York pronunciation is HOW-stun.

Furtive shibboleths
A "furtive shibboleth" is a type of a shibboleth that identifies individuals as being part of a group, not based on their ability to pronounce one or more words, but on their ability to recognize a seemingly innocuous phrase as a secret message. For example, members of Alcoholics Anonymous sometimes refer to themselves as "a friend of Bill W.", which is a reference to AA's founder, William Griffith Wilson. To the uninitiated, this would seem like a casual – if off-topic – remark, but other AA members would understand its meaning.

Similarly, during World War II, a homosexual US sailor might call himself a "friend of Dorothy", a tongue-in-cheek acknowledgment of a stereotypical affinity for Judy Garland in The Wizard of Oz. This code was so effective that the Naval Investigative Service, upon learning that the phrase was a way for gay sailors to identify each other, undertook a search for this "Dorothy", whom they believed to be an actual woman with connections to homosexual servicemen in the Chicago area.

Likewise, homosexuals in Britain might use the cant language Polari.

Mark Twain used an explicit shibboleth to conceal a furtive shibboleth. In The Innocents Abroad he told the Shibboleth story in seemingly "inept and uninteresting" detail. To the initiated, however, the wording revealed that Twain was a freemason.

"Fourteen Words", "14", or "14/88" are furtive shibboleths used among white supremacists in the Anglosphere.

In art
Colombian conceptual artist Doris Salcedo created a work titled Shibboleth at Tate Modern, London, in 2007–2008. The piece consisted of a 548-foot-long crack that bisected the floor of the Tate's lobby space.

Salcedo said of the work: "It represents borders, the experience of immigrants, the experience of segregation, the experience of racial hatred. It is the experience of a Third World person coming into the heart of Europe. For example, the space which illegal immigrants occupy is a negative space. And so this piece is a negative space."