# Posted 6:16 AM by Patrick Belton  

SILLY LANGUAGE TRICKS: One of the many things which make the world a generally interesting place to live in is its large number of in-group or secret languages, cants and cryptolects - many of which have existed for enormous stretches of time, and have popped up virtually intact after being transmitted from one very different group to another - and in the process, have often generated bits of slang which all of us would frequently recognise, even if it's occasionally a bit naff. Here are some examples, to get you started speaking incomprehensibly on your own:

• Verlan, a French banlieu slang which relies on constant inversion of syllables. The name is itself Verlan: Verlan is verlan for Lanver, or l'envers, the reverse. Some examples, to get you up and speaking Verlan for your next trip to the banlieux: tromé - métro; laisse béton - laisse tomber (drop or stop it); keum - mec (colloquial for man); meuf - femme (woman); reum - mère (mother); reup - père (father); keuf - flic (policeman; flic is coll. for cop); ouf - fou (crazy); zyva - vas-y (go for it); fais ièche - fais chier (slang for it's boring); céfran - français; relou - lourd (heavy, boring); zarbi - bizarre (strange); chanmé - méchant (wicked!, excellent!); chelou - louche (shady); keutru - truc (stuff). Where it gets even more interesting is that the generation of soixante-huitards, in university around 1968, adopted Verlan so broadly, and then rose to positions of prominence in the Establishment, that young, often Maghrebbian banlieu residents began to Verlan the Verlan. Doesn't that make, err, French, you ask? No, not precisely, because it changes a bit in each incarnation: c.f., reubeu - beur; beur is itself Verlan for arabe, making reubeu an instance of double-verlan. Here's a handy Verlan phrase book, for your next trip to Paris.

• Polari, which began as a cryptolect used in the nineteenth century by carnies and other entertainers, and in the 1950's became an in-group cant used by London fishmongers and later widely by male homosexuals (for whom a language incomprehensible to outsiders afforded a measure of protection against, say, plainclothes policemen, who may have been better received had they been wearing uniforms). It includes influences of the earlier medieval sailors' and merchants' lingua franca pidgin, who would presumably have gone to different parties. It's the origin of the term naff (not available for, erm, fornication; used broadly by the BBC's show Round the Horne in place of other expletives unavailable for broadcasting). Handy Polari phrase: "How bona to vada your ecaf!" - "How good to see your face!" For more, here and here.

• Shelta or Travellers' Cant, sometimes also called Gammon, a secret dialect of Irish spoken by the nomadic, itinerant Travelling people. It's still largely a secret language; anthropologists who have studied it have been asked by members of the Travelling community to withdraw their research from the public domain, and these have generally complied. Now it's more broadly documented, as members of the community come to fear it will die out: a few sources on their language are here and here. Prince Hal, in Henry IV, Part I, boasts he "can drink with any tinker in his own language." The Travellers were once roundly (and, as it turns, incorrectly) assumed to have lost their land during the Famine and never recovered it; and were until recently referred to by the now-pejorative "tinkers," to describe their pre-Industrial Revolution principal occupation of metallurgy, now replaced generally by mending and recycling. There are also Scottish Travellers, as the Travellers, well, they travel. There are other secretive cants, too: Thieves' Cant, as the name subtly hints, was used as a secret language by Victorian brigands, and is now helpfully documented for those wishing to to pursue a career in that promising field, and Eton now obligingly includes a glossary of (the tamer sorts of) public school cant.

Of course, some secret languages have managed to still remain truly secret. In fact, there's one which David, Josh, and I speak to proficiency, if not quite fluency. However, the cryptolect of Political Science Jargon rarely includes anything interesting or edifying to an outside audience, so I won't waste space by going into it here. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion