Polari, the Lost Gay English Dialect | Hacker News Reader

Polari, the Lost Gay English Dialect

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101 pointspeteforde22 comments

More on Polari https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polari

I grew up listening to recordings of "Round the Horne" in the UK, which included two characters Julian & Sandy that chatted a little in Polari during their sketches. A bunch of Polari words and phrases have migrated into general UK slang — so it's not really a case of dying out… more migrating and changing — as languages & dialects often do.

You can listen to Round the Horne and The Navy Lark today on BBC iPlayer:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00c7q4l/episodes/player

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00bfvkd/episodes/player

Liverpool's Maritime Museum has an insightful exhibit on gay life at sea; the exhibit includes a section on the polari:

http://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/maritime/visit/floor-plan...

I'm always astonished as to hows fresh Round the Horne sounds even today, when many of the comedy programmes of that era sound distinctly dated. Still funny, worth a listen.

...and, co-incidentally, there's also available at the moment a documentary about Julian and Sandy - http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b007jwhr

Incidentally, Morrissey had a single 'Piccadilly Palari' about male prostitution in the Piccadilly circus area in which he included polari cant.

Well, even if much of its content is taken up by regular English, it's still dying.

English took a lot of vocabulary from Norman French, but that doesn't mean Norman French is alive, for example.

Me to now looking back I am surprised the way round the horn got away with so much

There's an excellent Julian and Sandy sketch where they run a web design agency - http://tjathurman.tumblr.com/post/124925252596/information-b...

As I'm sure you know but others might not, that's not a "real" Julian and Sandy sketch.

Edit: The classic Julian and Sandy sketches were recorded between 1965 and 1968. The last one was a reunion in 1987, shortly before Kenneth Williams' death.

It reminded me a lot of Monty Python too.

Morrissey sings of this: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piccadilly_Palare

Ian McDonald's Everness series has main characters speaking in Polari, and where I first encountered it as a thing. And the books, even though they're aimed at young adults are really good.

What surprised me is how many words I use regualrly had their origins in Polari. I don't know whether it's because they've made their way into mainstream language, or just a regional thing though.

There is a similar phenomenon in American English where a huge, huge number of words in the dominant dialects come directly from AAVE (Afro-American Vernacular English). I would not be surprised if many of those words have spread all throughout the anglophonic world.

I love the fact that "trolling" has made the jump to regular usage, although the UK media has ruined the meaning [1] once more in due course.

[1] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-29678989

Trolling in Polari has a different origin from its usage in reference to the internet, where the term has its origin in alt.folklore.urban. The Polari term is still used in the gay scene (it refers to loitering around a known cottaging location hoping to meet someone).

I've always assumed both were derivatives of trawling, a fishing term.

Trawling and trolling are different fishing techniques. Trawling involves hanging a big net off the back of a boat to scoop up all the fish along a large swath of water, whereas trolling involves hanging one or more baited lines off the back of a boat, with the boat’s slow movement enticing fish to bite.

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trawling https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolling_(fishing)

They are, and in one way or another each has been influenced by the double entendre with the folkloric creature, but they mean different things.

Url changed from http://kottke.org/15/08/the-lost-language-of-gay-english-men, which points to this.

Thanks!

The circuses were dominated by Italian families, and probably some of the fairgrounds also, but what's the connection between circuses / fairgrounds and theaters?

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