 |
| Holy Bible : Genesis, chapter 1 in Polari. |
Polari, now pretty well extinct, was a pidgin language
derived from a Mediterranean Lingua Franca
used and fed by North Africans, Italians,
Occitans, French, Spaniards and perhaps Turks.
It passed into a sociolect form of English, a kind of secret-
or anti-language which included rhyming slang,
American air-force slang, drug-user slang, Parlyaree
(an older form of slang used by tinkers, beggars
and travelling players), Cant (an even older form of slang
learned and spoken in prisons), and back-slang:
saying a word as if it's spelt backwards
as in modern French verlan (from l'envers).
It was then, after World War One and especially
after World War Two crudely adopted as a slang
by queer men (who often ended up in prison for 'soliciting'
or 'obscene behaviour'), but since the partial decriminalisation
of queerness it has fallen out of use.
It was also regularly used by queer women, theatre folk
and 'sea-queens' in the Merchant Navy: Hello Sailor!
Polari terms and phrases were famously broadcast
around the British Isles by a 1960s BBC radio comedy
Beyond our Ken which, ironically,
helped towards its demise.
read more on The Conversation and
https://www.lancaster.ac.uk/staff/bakerjp/polari/home.htm
and watch the video of
Polari-the-code-language-gay-men-used-to-survive
No comments:
Post a Comment