Polari: The Lost Language Of Omi Polones

Some gay people – men in particular – did indeed used to speak their own language. Of sorts. It was less a language and more of a cant – a coded lexicon used exclusively to avoid detection by unwanted outsiders. That could’ve been the police, disapproving conservative society, or simply the group on the table next to you that you were bitching about.

So the short answer is – gay people don’t speak their own language any more. But, in 1960s Britain, gay men in large cities – particularly London – came close to doing so. It’s now archaic because the oppressive conditions which brought it about have, encouragingly, evaporated into equality in Britain. But there’s a move from language lovers like myself to preserve and promote Polari as a kind of linguistic artefact – so the toils, battles, and cheeky, resilient character of those who spoke it are remembered and respected. I particularly enjoy using the Polari app, which gives etymologies and explanations of the full Polari lexicon as far as records exist. Every time you shake your phone, a randomizer flashes up a new Polari word on your screen. Fantabulosa! ...

A guest blog for OxfordWords by Gary Nunn. 

A good piece on a subject that's usually strewn with myths and misunderstandings.

It was slang, not really a 'language', but it wasn't really mainly about a hidden people needing to speak in code, as Nunn suggests. Almost all subcultures develop their own argot...

Dylan & Jack: The New Julian & Sandy

London-based twenty-something journalists Dylan B Jones and Jack Cullen launch the pilot of their podcast 'Dylan & Jack', discussing the ins and outs of London's gay scene, the media circuit, Soho's underworld and other LGBT and urbane issues.

Follow the pair on Twitter: @DylanBJones / @JackCullenUK

In this episode: "Who To Have On The Show?", "Who Are We?", "Hollister", "Heaven on a Monday", "The Daily Mail and Kate Moss", "Ru Paul's Drag Race".

Plus each episode's regular haunts: Dispositions, competitions, questionable advice, interrogative chit chat and state of the art bitching.

Please listen. 

Hilarious.

Queens rool!

Detective Sergeant Nick Mohammed: Bent Copper?

Just listened to episode two of this, Detective Sergeant Nick Mohammed.
Funniest thing on the wireless since Warhorses Of Letters.
And the dimwitted camp* copper is surely the finest (non-equine!) radio comedy creation since Ed Reardon.
So there.

* I haven't heard Nick express any love/lust interest either way yet, but he's screaming even louder than Julian & Sandy. Together.

Polari: Talking Rubbish

There's a fitting irony that polari is often misrepresented as being a language; much writing about gay men in the media still reads like anthropology, describing a strange, lost tribe whose ways are quite alien.
There is a piece in the Telegraph today; 'British languages 'in danger of dying out within a generation''
"Twenty languages spoken in the UK - including Old Kentish Sign Language - have become extinct or are in danger of dying out within a generation according to academics who are attempting to halt their disappearance..."
"Also included is Polari, a language which grew from ingredients of Italian, Romany and Hebrew origin and was used by homosexual men in the mid-19th century as a secret code at a time when it was still illegal to be gay."
Once upon a time journalists would make their own mistakes, in the age of the internet they just repeat other peoples'.
Polari isn't really a language - you couldn't hold a conversation in it - it's just an umbrella term for some slang words used by some British gay men in the twentieth century.
There have been various attempts to compile polari dictionaries, but only a few words ever had anything approaching a common currency.
Saying that polari was "a secret code at a time when it was still illegal to be gay" is mendacious.
According to Wikipedia - the idiot's friend - it was used "to disguise homosexual activity from hostile outsiders and undercover policemen".
It wasn't really - it was just a bunch of words various groups of gay people used, often just small groups of friends; it wasn't subterfuge, it was more likely to be used by gay men when they felt safe, with their own kind, in private conversations, in a bar, over lunch, at parties.
And how can polari be "in danger of dying out" when it's always been in a state of flux?