Comments on: Security + Language = Shibboleth

By: Steven G. Harms

Steven G. Harms — Tue, 06 Feb 2007 17:46:59 +0000

I learned about another practical instance of this when I was learning Dutch.

There is a famous beach near The Hague ( Den Haag or des Gravenhage, has 'twas known in days of yore ) called Scheveningen.

The syllable of that Sch is unique to Dutch, it's a rolling gutteral and is markedly different from the Sch sound in German ( which is like Sh in the English word Sheep ).

Thus, similar to the WW reference above, Scheveningen was a shibboleth during WWII to identify Germans from Dutchmen.

Being a studious-minded guy I managed to get the phoneme before my departure. It really gets the ol' Vollmer bone buzzing.

By: Daniel Miessler

Daniel Miessler — Tue, 06 Feb 2007 15:08:43 +0000

Good point — fixed now. :)

By: Jason Powell

Jason Powell — Tue, 06 Feb 2007 12:27:07 +0000

"...and based on the response you can tell whether the person is part of the secret club or not..."

I think it's more specific to say, "based on the delivery of the response."

By: Allie

Allie — Tue, 06 Feb 2007 08:18:46 +0000

This was used in an episode of west wing to determine if someone was faking a religion or not.