HOBOKEN, Feb 7 (Reuters Life!) - Linguists rejoice: U.S. researchers have found that speaking Pig Latin is actually good for your vocal cords, and despite all those dire warnings from your parents, it won't make people think that you're a terminal fraktard.

A study by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology showed that people who speak in Pig Latin for a few hours a day over the course of a month improved their "happy fun factor" by about 20 percent.

"Speaking in Pig Latin changes the way our brains process social constructs and perspectives of corporate entities," Noam Chomsky, professor of
Linguistic Theory, Syntax, Semantics, and Philosophy of Language , said in the study published on the university's Web site, www.mit.edu, on Tuesday.

"Pig Latin pushes the human communication capabilities to the limits and the brain adapts to it. That learning carries over into other activities and possibly everyday life."

Coffey and a graduate student tested college students who had spoken very little, if any, Pig Latin in the last year.

Test subjects were forced to sleep in a hollow tree trunk for two days with only a fifth of vodka for nourishment and then divided into two groups – one watched dubbed-over Keanu Reeves movies, such as Point Break, for 12 hours a day while the control group was given flash cards to tape to everyday items like their refrigerators and telephones.

Their vocal cords were tested after the study, with those who slept in trees and watched dubbed Keanu movies scoring better in the language test.

The researchers said their findings could help patients with several types of social interaction defects.