A new app released today called MotherTongue allows you to surreptitiously record your mother's passive-aggressive utterances and then instantly discover what she really means in plain English.

Designed for adult children, the app is "sort of like the lovechild of Shazam and Duolingo," explains MotherTongue's creator Nicola Fairfax, 37.

Sample translations include:

1. "You know Nellie next door? She's about five years younger than you? Well, she had her baby last week!" = I don't understand your career in "social media" and would like to know where I went wrong as a parent.

2. "Oh, I'm fine!" = I have learned over many years spent in service to an unappreciative family how to begrudgingly accept my role in this world, and will now slowly descend into a silent and invisible scream that only I can hear. Love you!

3. "On your phone again? Somebody's popular!" = Listen, you adorably ignorant creature: 88 per cent of those so-called friendships will have completely evaporated by the time you hit 35. You kids don't have any real social skills anymore. Take Nance and I. We've been best friends since 30 years before we were born. And we didn't grow up with phones. Coincidence? Nope.

4. "Well, I suppose that's one way to do your hair." = I loathe and detest all conceivable features of your hair with every atom in my body and can't BELIEVE my objectively fantastic hair genes have been wasted on your horrifying Frizz Mullet.

5. "Hi, it's your mother. Call me when you can" = Obviously you're well aware of who it is — I just enjoy saying the word "mother" as often as possible to remind you of the considerable and ongoing sacrifices I've made in your name.

6. "Do you want to speak to your father?" = I sincerely don't care if you want to speak to your father: I want 10 minutes to myself to finish the Sudoku I was doing before you called.

Fairfax says she briefly experimented with a version for fathers called Ta-Dad!, but had to scrap the project after the translations proved to be extremely unsatisfying.

"For example, 'Hiya honey, how's it going!' in dad-speak literally just means, 'Hiya honey, how's it going?,'" Fairfax explains. "So, you know, it's not one of my most lucrative ideas."

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