And then Greensleeves got invoked, and I couldnāt help but Do the Thing. =DĀ Many thanks to @copperbadge for converting it to mp3!
(The crappy quality was all me.Ā My means of recording myself is an eleven-year-old point-and-shoot camera, and I was singing quietly in a small room so as not to disturb the neighbors at silly hours of the night.Ā Not terribly conducive to good sound quality.Ā Hereās hoping it amuses anyway. ^_^)
So āmy name is Cowā¦ i lik the bredā seems to be the Hot New Meme, and I like it. Hereās an odd thing about it, though; a lot of the cutsey animal talk I see on the internet (especially birb-speak) sometimes reminds me of Middle English, but ālik the bredā takes it even further and sounds downright Chaucerian, and it isnāt just the rhyme and cadence. Some of the ālik the bredā pastiches I see around donāt really work because theyāre in just plain doggo-fran speak (havenāt decided if Doggo-fran and Birb are the same thing or not), but the ones that really hit all the same notes as the original have something going on with the mangled vowels and spelling thatās not the same as the mangling in Doggo and/or Birb. Maybe some time Iāll gather up some examples and look closely at the vowels and spelling and try and sort out precisely whatās up.
my name is Cow i make yu think of likking bred and tayking drink i studdy buks that i have herd so wen yur gon i rite the werd.
now yu may think wen reeding this āyu typ with hoofs, wy dont yu miss?ā i ask yu now be pashent, plees i type with tung i lik the kees
Re: the OP – I donāt think Doggo-fran and Birb-speak are the same at all, but itās tricky to articulate why (probably because Iām not actually a linguist).
I think Doggo-fran revolves around intentionally switching out syllables in words (or adding them onto mono-syllabic words) – although actually Iām not sure precisely what @runecestershire is referring to here but the other thing that comes to mind is the āborkā meme speak which revolves mostly around the nonsense sentence structure āyou are doing me a [verb]ā. Both cases seem to me to be a lot more specific in usage than Birb-speak.
Birb-speak revolves more around intentionally bad spelling and grammar, often with an overblown sense of urgency to imitate something being typed (and thus spoken) loudly, at high speed and with little accuracy (although there are two slightly different memetic forms of Birb-speak – one originating from the @probirdrights Twitter and the other from the @importantbirds Tumblr and their styles, while similar, are not identical).
But the OP is indeed correct that proper-sounding āi lik the bredā poems have a very specific structure and language to them which is distinct again from the other examples.
I have also noticed this! I thought I was alone in thinking they sounded like middle english!!
A few of the spellings used in the āi lik the bredā poems are almost exactly the same as those in my Chaucer text.
One of the things that Iāve noticed about the class of stylized ungrammatical animal memes is that they tend to go for either orthographic stylization, often indicating modified, cute pronunciation (lolcat: teh kitteh, pupper: y r u so smol, birb: popsackles) or morphosyntactic stylization (doge: such meme, wow. lolcat: i made you a cookie but i eated it. birb: i get it you can wear pant. doggo/snek: gosh hecking darn it, doing you a frighten, booping the snoot). Even though some of these memes have both orthographic and grammatical options, they often pick just one for a particular utterance. Ā
In this context, āi lik the bredā does several things differently. For one, it involves both orthography and constraints on metre at the same time. Although other memes often involve a sense of comedic timing (and thereās at least one poem written in lolcat), I havenāt seen a strictly metred meme before. I also havenāt seen an animal meme not originally associated with captioned images, for that matter.Ā
The particular orthography is also interesting. Memish animals speak in internetspeak or babytalk, sometimes at the same time. But the stylized spelling in āi lik the bredā isnāt internettish or childish, and in particular isnāt designed to be pronounced differently ā see for example the version sung to the tune of Greensleeves.
Despite the animal subject matter and stylized linguistic form, the origins of āi lik the bredā in text rather than images and its more sober style has more in common with tumblr text-based memes likeĀ spiders georg, the horoscope meme, regional gothic, and so on.Ā
The time has come that some things must
be said. The new yearās in. The seasons scurry
by. I start to tire of āi lik the bred.ā
All other forms of poetry are fled. Itās ABCB, ABCB ā why? The time has come that some things must
be said.
Innumerable variations read ā The calf, the cats, the goats and the
Radchaai ā I start to tire of āi lik the bred.ā
I understand; it gets into your head And, cowed, you think in iambs ā as
do I. The time has come that some things must
be said.
The bredlik ruled as king, and we were
led. But spring returns, and now the king
must die. We start to tire of āi lik the bredā
The moon may shine. Still, cows must go
to bed. It will not be too hard to say goodbye
ā The time has come that such things must
be said. I start to tire of āi lik the bred.ā
I picked up a worm, and it wrote something in my hand with a tiny pencil. Unfortunately it was too small to read. An autograph? A spell? An angry note?
Iāve decided to line up with their writing and whatever they wrote appear to beā¦. phallic.
I donāt how to break the news with you, but, I think that worm drew a penis on your handā¦. Congratulation?
Ooh! Thank you for this valuable contribution to the field of worm linguistics and/or art. It is still unclear to me if itās meant as a rude message to me, if itās just putting its tag there, or something else. Further research is needed!
I think the idea of it being a penis is anthropomorphism. I mean, the worm doesnāt have a penis itself, nor proper eyes with which to see one. No, Iām afraid this is something far more interesting: a self-portrait. You have been touched by an aesthetic annelid, and now your life will never be the same.
Now I will forever try to communicate with all the worms I find, but I worry that Iāll never meet this one again.
My name is Werm I liv in ground And thru the darck I skwirm around
The peepl tell me All the tym Iām farr too yuck With too much slym
326 Miles 
