Google last week announced a new cell phone application for pet lovers – Google Translate for Animals.

Evidently buoyant from the success of its conventional auto-translation program, the company declared itself "excited" to unveil the new application, which promised "greater interaction and understanding between animal and human."

Google claimed to have "worked closely with many of the world's top language synthesis teams, and with leaders in the field of animal cognitive linguistics, including senior fellows at the Bodleian Library in Oxford."

Unfortunately for those eager for the chance to engage in conversation with their pets, the too-good-to-be-true application was an April Fool's joke. On the same day, Google announced that it would be changing its name to Topeka, a reversal of an actual publicity stunt in which the city of Topeka, Kansas, renamed itself Google for the entire month of March, 2010.

There were linguistic pranks elsewhere, too. In Denmark, the newspaper Politiken invented a story about the Danish Language Council abolishing the silent H at the beginning of words.

Linguistic April Fool's stunts have occasionally made the news in years past. In 1998, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology claimed it had been sold to the Walt Disney Company and would be relocated to Orlando, Florida, where new additions would include the Donald Duck Department of Linguistics.

Among the more complicated linguistic gags this year was one from The Local, which presents Sweden's news in English. The website announced that it had plans to publish America's news in British English, Britain's news in American English, India's news in Pakistani English, Canada's news in Australian English and New Zealand's news in Irish English – among several other exotic combinations.

04 April 2010