Church Of England: Bona

A Church of England theological college has expressed regret after trainee priests held a service in the antiquated gay slang language Polari.

The service at the chapel of Westcott House in Cambridge was to commemorate LGBT history month.

The congregation was told the use of the lexicon was an attempt to "queer the liturgy of evening prayer".

But officials said it had not been authorised and was at variance with the doctrine and teaching of the church.

Polari is thought to have originated in Victorian London but fell out of use as homosexuality began to be decriminalised in England in the 1960s.

Its words, however, were brought to wider public attention in the same decade by comedian Kenneth Williams in the BBC radio series Round the Horne.
'Fantabulosa Fairy'

One person present at the service told BBC News it was led by an ordinand - a trainee priest - rather than a licensed minister.

The congregation was also made up of trainees.

While they had been given permission to hold a service to commemorate LGBT history month, a Church of England source said the college chaplain had not seen the wording of the service.

The translation was based on the Polari bible, a work compiled as a project in 2003 by the self-styled Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence.

The scripture and liturgy were printed on to an order of service.

An Old Testament reading from the Prophet Joel which says "rend your heart and not your garments, return to the Lord your God" was printed in Polari as "rend your thumping chest and not your frocks - and turn unto the Duchess your Gloria: for she is bona and merciful".

Instead of the traditional "Glory be to the father, and to the son, and the Holy Spirit" the prayer offered was: "Fabeness be to the Auntie, and to the Homie Chavvie, and to the Fantabulosa Fairy".

Services in the Church of England are legally required to be conducted using the church's approved liturgy.

The principal of Westcott House, the Rev Canon Chris Chivers, said the liturgy of the service had not been authorised for use.

He said: "I fully recognise that the contents of the service are at variance with the doctrine and teaching of the Church of England and that is hugely regrettable.

"Inevitably for some members of the house this caused considerable upset and disquiet and I have spoken at length to those involved in organising the service.

"I will be reviewing and tightening the internal mechanisms of the house to ensure this never happens again."

BBC News.

This is exactly like medieval churches only wanting the Bible available in Latin. 

Gay: So It Goes

Frank Kameny archive.

Reclaiming words, when done effectively, is all about power, Thorne [Tony, curator of the Slang And New Language Archive] tells me. “Reappropriation of ethnic and sexual slurs starts as an act of bravado by a few of the oppressed, then may become an empowering mechanism for a much wider community. It’s pleasingly ironic that those discriminated against have learned the Orwellian trick employed by the state and the establishment of hijacking everyday language (as in ‘doublespeak’) for their own nefarious purposes. Alternative discourse ousts and replaces the discourses of power.”

Paul Baker, professor of English Language at Lancaster University, agrees. “Control language and you control the society,” he says...

Reclaiming words is not a new phenomenon. Thorne points out: “Reversing pejoratives has a long history going back to cavalier, sans-culotte, Tory and Whig.” [Or Christian or communist - FB]. 

Modern reclaiming has had mixed success. He says: “Recently such terms as slut, gay and ginger (and to some extent nerd and geek) have been rebranded – perhaps with a tinge of irony.” As someone who has been all five of those things, I can safely say that some have been better reclaimed than others.

Paul Baker says; “Queer was reclaimed by academics and activists in the early 1990s. There was a shouty defiance about queer too – it wasn’t just pride, it was political activism and opposition to homophobic government policy like section 28. It was a disruptive and anarchic response to conservative forces at that time. But in reality very few people actually engaged with this wider ‘anything against the normal’ meaning of queer.
 
“That’s one of the problems with reclaiming concepts: not only do you have a set of people who don’t understand that the word has been reclaimed in the first place, so they continue to use it in the older negative way, but you can also have different understandings of what the reclaiming actually means. And even if you’re in on it, you still may not want to participate.” We are seeing a similar thing play out now with the word “gay”...

Gary Nunn, in his monthly Guardian blog, Mind Your Language.

Note the irony of how quickly 'queer' became re-reclaimed; it's now usually used as an empty signifier of 'radicalism' by homosexualists who are about as radical as a wobbly pink blancmange.

Fagburn wonders if the word 'gay' - which has been reclaimed as a pejorative - will eventually go the same way as 'sod' and 'bugger', and become completely detatched from its homosexual meaning.

PS The UK release of the documentary Do I Sound Gay? 'inspired' a discussion on Woman's Hour today, Is there a gay dialect? (!), where Lucy Jones, an assistant professor of sociolinguistics, made the incredibly silly claim that polari was used as a code - no, it was just slang. If  'academic experts' just repeat nonsense they Googled and don't get picked up on it, no wonder we are doomed...

Putting On The Dish: A Short Film In Your Actual Polari

Putting on the Dish from Brian and Karl on Vimeo.

This amused me.

Thanks to Brian & Karl. x

PS I've asked them if they can do a subtitled version for the youngsters.

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...

Champagne Charlie: Bona Eke (Sic)

The original 'Bona Eek' was recorded by that most bona drag queen, Lee Sutton, live in 1968 (6.40 in) - this album is filthy gay genius comedy GOLD, pls listen.

'My heart starts a racket, every time I see your packet...'

Sunday Night At The London Palladium: Bona Hoofer

"Vada the bona lallies on the feelie," was, apart from a few "good mornings", my only welcome as I entered my new dressing room backstage at the London Palladium.

I would later learn that the greeting was in a theatrical patois called Polari and translates as: "Look at the kid with the lovely legs."

It was my first day at the world's most famous variety house.

I had never heard of Polari and I must confess not to a flush of fear but more a cynical sneer as I crossed the boundary between classical ballet and the commercial theatre.

The gobbledegook greeting confirmed my worst fears...

Live television changed my life. Being on stage in the first place is both scary and rewarding but knowing you have to be perfect, often with minimum rehearsal, for 20 million pairs of eyes, strips you to the core.

There is no second chance, you either hit it 100 per cent immediately or you are dead.

When your too-tight pants split, which they do often, or your partner hits the floor, there is nothing you can do but keep on smiling and bashing it out...

A sweet piece in The Sunday Express where Jeffrey Taylor remembers being a dancer on Sunday Night At The London Palladium in the 60s. 

Jeffrey is now a regular theatre reviewer for the Express.

Polari: The Lost Language Of Queens

The Polari Magazine production In The Life: A History of Polari plays for one exclusive performance at London’s prestigious St James Theatre on Sunday June 23 at 3.30 pm.
On the dark streets of post-war 1950s London, a powdered queen screeched, “vada the lallies on the omee ajax”, and in so doing used a secret language, Polari, the roots of which can be traced all the way back to 11th century Saxon England.
In The Life is a staged radio performance that marries narration and sketches to explore how Polari, the rich mix of words that made up this secret verbal handshake, came into being...
Troll along, and nellyarda to how the omee-palones of a bygone era endured in a time when homosexual acts were illegal.

Go see - tis written by my mate, Chris.

• Polari magazine.

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?