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Source: (consider it) Thread: Does rhyming slang ever double up?
Josephine

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Does it ever happen that a word in Cockney rhyming slang becomes such a normal word for something that it goes through a second round of rhyming?

Like, would it be possible for trouble (trouble and strife) to become such a common word for wife that it loses its connection to the rhyming slang, and then another rhyme (soap bubble) would come into use, so that soap would mean wife?

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Eutychus
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I don't know about rhyming slang, but consider French verlan (derived from l'envers) which involves inverting the syllables of words - and has given rise to reverse verlan:
quote:
Some verlan words, such as meuf [from femme], have become so commonplace that they have been included into the Petit Larousse and a doubly "verlanised" version was rendered necessary, so the singly verlanised meuf became feumeu; similarly, the verlan word beur, derived from arabe, has become accepted into popular culture such that it has been re-verlanised to yield rebeu


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Lord Jestocost
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From the Wikipedia entry on this topic:

quote:

In some examples the meaning is further obscured by adding a second iteration of rhyme and truncation to the original rhymed phrase. For example, the word "Aris" is often used to indicate the buttocks. This is the result of a double rhyme, starting with the original rough synonym "arse", which is rhymed with "bottle and glass", leading to "bottle". "Bottle" was then rhymed with "Aristotle" and truncated to "Aris"

Is that what you meant?
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quetzalcoatl
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I live in an area where rhyme is used quite a lot, although maybe a bit self-consciously sometimes, but it's hard to think of genuine doubles. For example, people round here say 'let's go for a ruby' (= Murray = curry), but it's unlikely that somebody would then rhyme 'ruby'.

I was also thinking about polari (gay slang), which was very inventive, e.g. it used back slang, but again, I can't think of any doubles.

But London street slang moves faster than a speeding bullet. As soon as it's on TV, the kids move on to something else quite often. Thus, 'Top Boy' had some of it, e.g. blood, wagwan, feds, sket, but probably the kids in Hackney are also pissing themselves at its old-fashioned feel.

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The Great Gumby

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quote:
Originally posted by Lord Jestocost:
From the Wikipedia entry on this topic:

quote:

In some examples the meaning is further obscured by adding a second iteration of rhyme and truncation to the original rhymed phrase. For example, the word "Aris" is often used to indicate the buttocks. This is the result of a double rhyme, starting with the original rough synonym "arse", which is rhymed with "bottle and glass", leading to "bottle". "Bottle" was then rhymed with "Aristotle" and truncated to "Aris"

Is that what you meant?
It's most likely to occur when the original rhyming slang has become a dead metaphor. So words like berk, raspberry, bread (as in money) or cobblers would all be candidates for nested rhyming slang, because they're now commonly understood as words in their own right, despite being derived from rhyming slang.

I've got a feeling that I have heard something like this, but I can't quite put my finger on it. It could be that I'm remembering Bill Oddie's fictional example from ISIRTA, which was about six layers deep.

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jacobsen

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To be pernickety, Bread as in money derives from the US. Bread, as in loaf of bread = head, is the cockney usage.

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quetzalcoatl
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Except that in English, you say 'use your loaf', not 'use your bread'.

It's normal to only use the first word in the rhyming phrase, although some whole phrases are used.

If you look up lists of rhyming phrases on the internet, I really doubt that many of them are used today, e.g. apples and pears, johnny horner.

But 'boracic' is still used, 'boracic lint' = skint; brahms and liszt (= pissed); bristols (bristol city = titty); butcher's (= hook = look); china (= plate = mate); cream crackered (= knackered); dog and bone (= phone), etc.

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Zacchaeus
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quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
Except that in English, you say 'use your loaf', not 'use your bread'.

It's normal to only use the first word in the rhyming phrase, although some whole phrases are used.

If you look up lists of rhyming phrases on the internet, I really doubt that many of them are used today, e.g. apples and pears, johnny horner.

But 'boracic' is still used, 'boracic lint' = skint; brahms and liszt (= pissed); bristols (bristol city = titty); butcher's (= hook = look); china (= plate = mate); cream crackered (= knackered); dog and bone (= phone), etc.

Well you learn something new every day. I always assumed that 'boracic' was brassic and had something to do with the brass balls a pawnbroker had outside his premises.

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Curiosity killed ...

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Kids I'm currently working with in Hackney think Top Boy is so good they're probably reimporting the language back ... (that one has some East End roots). I can't think of any dialect they're using that I haven't picked up already and if it's any different to the stuff I've heard for the last few years. "Bear" as an amplifier is still around.

Back to the rhyming slang - lots of invented stuff that didn't come from the area is used self-consciously, but I can't think of hearing much in use. That area, Whitechapel, Stepney, Bow is far more Asian than traditional cockney. Whitechapel market is pretty much pure Bangladeshi, and Roman Road market has a lot of Bangladeshi stalls.

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quetzalcoatl
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Yes, the rhymes have become a sort of play thing, which some groups use more or less self-consciously. In fact, me and the war and strife sometimes rabbit and pork to each other, fancy going round the johnny horner to the rub-a-dub dub for a coupla Britneys, innit.

Now that one - Britney Spear for beer - is probably mockney I think, still who cares, it's fun. There are also some ruder ones about Ms Spears, which I shall not repeat here.

The commonest ones that I hear, and probably very old, is tea-leaf for thief, and half-inch for pinch, and of course porkies for lies.

I am talking Fulham here, a very strong London accent, and one thing I am noticing is that some young guys nowadays have extremely strong accents, more than the older guys, so I wonder if that is a kind of political or regional assertiveness, maybe. I hope somebody is doing a Ph. D. on this, as there are all kind of fusions going on, with Jamaican slang mixing in with old London stuff, plus gang stuff, etc.

Incidentally, I've heard of a triple - April in Paris, for aris, for Aristotle, for bottle, for bottle and glass, for arse. So you would say, 'I fell on me April'. Not sure I believe that one.

Well, that's enough of the chitty chitty for tonight.

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Porridge
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Good grief. One might as well go to Starbucks and order off their menu.

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quetzalcoatl said
quote:
If you look up lists of rhyming phrases on the internet, I really doubt that many of them are used today, e.g. apples and pears, johnny horner.

I still hear (in South East London) "up the apples" for "upstairs".

One of my faves is "One for the frog" (and toad, ie road). But that's not a double, so I'll shut up now.

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quetzalcoatl
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Oh brilliant, I'm glad that apples is still used for stairs.

On Starbucks - oright, mate, daan the Lisa Tarbucks for some Everton toffee, here's the poppy!

(Poppy is a double from poppy red = bread = bread and honey = money).

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Josephine

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Thanks, y'all! There's an etymology blog that I read regularly, and I've sometimes thought that rhyming slang would be an etymologist's worst nightmare -- especially if it could be doubled (or tripled even!).

And I'd never heard of verlan before. That's fun!

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quetzalcoatl
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It used to be said that rhymes would naturally die out, as the old Londoners themselves died, the people who had said 'going up the apples now', and so on, quite naturally.

Well, obviously they have died, but it has seen a kind of renaissance, but in a more comic and self-conscious manner, akin to 'mockney'.

A lot of it is jokey - many people will remember 'J. Arthur' (+Rank), for 'wank', and so on.

Would you Adam and Eve it, the old chitty chitty has gone and come back!

Some new ones: leaky (tap) = app; banana (fritter) = Twitter; Will (I.am.) = scam.

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quetzalcoatl
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Yes, verlan sounds interesting.

Back slang has occurred in various parts of the UK, and amongst various groups, e.g. polari (gay slang) had some back slang.

Also it was supposed to be part of thieves' slang, and was definitely used in the East End of London a bit, e.g. 'deelo nam' for old man. Used supposedly in shops, so that the assistants could insult the customers!

Also, kids have always used pig Latin, which is a kind of back slang, everybody must know 'uckfay off-fay' and so on. 'Amscray' is a famous one.

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Angloid
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quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:

I am talking Fulham here, a very strong London accent, and one thing I am noticing is that some young guys nowadays have extremely strong accents, more than the older guys, so I wonder if that is a kind of political or regional assertiveness, maybe.

I wouldn't be surprised. Fulham is one of those areas where indigenous Londoners (if they still exist) are very much overwhelmed by the tide of wealthy invaders. In a similar way, the local accents of Merseyside and Tyneside have become noticeably more distinctive in recent years (according to academic research), resisting the homogenisation of the rest of the urban north to a sort of northern version of Estuary.

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Firenze

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There's a Polish shop nearby - Bona Deli.

I so want to go in and exclaim 'Lovely to vada your eek!'

(This only makes sense if your childhood was spent listening to Jules and Sandy)

But it also brings up the point that the primary transmission for linguistic subsets is mass media. Time was, you picked up one at home and (probably) had another walloped into you at school. Mr Polly has linguistic aspirations, but because he has only read the words and not heard them, his speech betrays him. So is it still the case that, as Shaw said, it is impossible for an Englishman to open his mouth without making some other one despise him? Would Eliza need to bother learning RP, or would she be better bigging up her natural Lunnon, init?

[ 09. October 2013, 10:09: Message edited by: Firenze ]

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quetzalcoatl
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quote:
Originally posted by Angloid:
quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:

I am talking Fulham here, a very strong London accent, and one thing I am noticing is that some young guys nowadays have extremely strong accents, more than the older guys, so I wonder if that is a kind of political or regional assertiveness, maybe.

I wouldn't be surprised. Fulham is one of those areas where indigenous Londoners (if they still exist) are very much overwhelmed by the tide of wealthy invaders. In a similar way, the local accents of Merseyside and Tyneside have become noticeably more distinctive in recent years (according to academic research), resisting the homogenisation of the rest of the urban north to a sort of northern version of Estuary.
Yes, good points. I was digging my allotment recently, close to a bunch of building workers, and I couldn't believe some of their accents. If you did it on TV, you would be accused of camping it up, so maybe they are. Anti-Yuppy!

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quetzalcoatl
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quote:
Originally posted by Firenze:
There's a Polish shop nearby - Bona Deli.

I so want to go in and exclaim 'Lovely to vada your eek!'

(This only makes sense if your childhood was spent listening to Jules and Sandy)

But it also brings up the point that the primary transmission for linguistic subsets is mass media. Time was, you picked up one at home and (probably) had another walloped into you at school. Mr Polly has linguistic aspirations, but because he has only read the words and not heard them, his speech betrays him. So is it still the case that, as Shaw said, it is impossible for an Englishman to open his mouth without making some other one despise him? Would Eliza need to bother learning RP, or would she be better bigging up her natural Lunnon, init?

I suppose the real trick is to learn both, so you can switch on RP, and then go back down the Fulham Road, and go in the Lisa for a cuppa molten, innit. But then you sound like a phoney - never mind, call it postmodern.

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Earwig

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quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
Well, obviously they have died, but it has seen a kind of renaissance, but in a more comic and self-conscious manner, akin to 'mockney'.

I reckon I'm the child of a father (not a cockney) who used comic rhyming slang, and a lot of it is just embedded vocabulary to me, words in their own right, as TGG said.

I got a real shock upthread reading that half-inch is rhyming slang - in my head it's just another word for pinch, like steal or take. Weird.

[ 09. October 2013, 10:38: Message edited by: Earwig ]

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quetzalcoatl
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Yes, some of the old rhymes just got incorporated into English, well, idiomatic English. Classic examples: cobblers, half-inch, porkies, on me todd (sloan), khyber (?) (pass), barking, brassic, brown bread (?), scarper (Scapa flow), use your loaf, etc.

Some weird ones: Schindler's (list) for pissed; Nuremberg (trials) for piles; Vera Lynn for heroin. Well, maybe somebody did use them.

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Penny S
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I thought it was Brahms for having too much drink taken, not Schindlers.

And I'm still stumped by chitty-chitty and molten...

I think you're taking the michael me son.

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quetzalcoatl
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Chitty chitty is rhyming slang for rhyming slang - chitty chitty bang bang; molten = molten (toffee) = coffee.

I can't vouch for chitty chitty, but I am pretty sure that 'a cuppa molten' is boda fide. I've never heard 'everton', (everton toffee = coffee), but I think it was used traditionally.

But I don't think some of them are genuine really, except as a piss-take maybe, or just a joke.

By the way, 'barking' above is completely wrong - I reversed it - the slang for 'barking' is '3 stops down from Plaistow', (on the London Tube), not a rhyme in any case.

My wife just said that she remembers 'ecaf' for 'cafe', back slang.

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L'organist
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As I told my children, NEVER call someone a berk
[Berkshire hunt ... [Eek!] ]

Rhyming slang is always adapting and taking on words, people and expressions from popular culture, such as politicians, pop stars and characters in soap operas, so "Down the rub for a Nelson (Mandela)" translates as Going to the pub for a pint of Stella Artois.

I leave you to work out Need the Boss (Hogg) for an Eartha ... [Killing me]

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Keren-Happuch

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Penny, I'm assuming molten (lava) = java.

Take a butcher's is another one in common use, I think. And I hadn't realised that on me todd was rhyming slang either.

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The Great Gumby

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quote:
Originally posted by jacobsen:
To be pernickety, Bread as in money derives from the US. Bread, as in loaf of bread = head, is the cockney usage.

To be pernickety, no. It's bread and honey = money. The bread in "loaf of bread" should never be spoken, in case it made the meaning too obvious to anyone listening in. Hence use your loaf. This neatly illustrates my point about dead metaphors, and how the origins of rhyming slang eventually get forgotten.

If a Cockney simply refers to bread, you're discussing financial matters, not higher cognition.

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Piglet
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quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
... Nuremberg (trials) for piles ...

I remember someone complaining he was suffering from "Dukes" (Duke of Argylls).

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Sioni Sais
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quote:
Originally posted by piglet:
quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
... Nuremberg (trials) for piles ...

I remember someone complaining he was suffering from "Dukes" (Duke of Argylls).
Cockneys must have sufered from these for years because "the Chalfonts" and the Farmers" are two more.

(I'm sure ecaf is polari, btw. Bona polari)

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quetzalcoatl
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It could be polari, but back slang seems to pop up in different times and places. Historically, it is supposed to have been used by costermongers (vatch you a yennep?), butchers, (tuck the dillo woc a tib of dillo woc, cut the old cow a bit of old cow), but also thieves used it, and then polari, and of course, school-kids, although I don't count pig Latin as back slang.

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quetzalcoatl
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quote:
Originally posted by The Great Gumby:
quote:
Originally posted by jacobsen:
To be pernickety, Bread as in money derives from the US. Bread, as in loaf of bread = head, is the cockney usage.

To be pernickety, no. It's bread and honey = money. The bread in "loaf of bread" should never be spoken, in case it made the meaning too obvious to anyone listening in. Hence use your loaf. This neatly illustrates my point about dead metaphors, and how the origins of rhyming slang eventually get forgotten.

If a Cockney simply refers to bread, you're discussing financial matters, not higher cognition.

Your point about it not being obvious is interesting, as it is often argued that quite a lot of slang originates from the need for secrecy and privacy. This could be to do with illegal stuff (thieves' slang, cf. today's drug dealers), or being able to slag people off without them knowing, (shop-keepers), or just a kind of clique, or restricted group, e.g. tradesmen.

I think there is also a kind of buzz from the unspoken bit, which is allusive, especially in the comic stuff, e.g. 'he's gone for a J. Arthur'. To put the 'Rank' in would spoil the sly humour.

Presumably, Cockneys masturbated a lot as there are a ton of rhymes for it: going for a Barclays, a Jodrell, an Armitage (Shank), a lamb (shank), a sherman (tank), and a Thomas (the Tank Engine), and in bad taste, an Anne Frank.

An amusing one is a Ravi (Shankar) for a wanker.

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Earwig

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quote:
Originally posted by Firenze:
There's a Polish shop nearby - Bona Deli.

This is a fascinating thread! I knew about Polari, but looked it up on Wiki and was surprised at how many of the words were what I think of normal, in common use. My mum's side of the family were dancers/ theatre types, and I'm sure I remember them using 'lally tappers' for feet.
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Adeodatus
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quote:
Originally posted by Earwig:
quote:
Originally posted by Firenze:
There's a Polish shop nearby - Bona Deli.

This is a fascinating thread! I knew about Polari, but looked it up on Wiki and was surprised at how many of the words were what I think of normal, in common use. My mum's side of the family were dancers/ theatre types, and I'm sure I remember them using 'lally tappers' for feet.
I'm fascinated by Polari, partly because its use used to be so widespread and its origins were so diverse - did it come from the theatres, the fairgrounds, the dockyards? How did it acquire its specifically southern European elements? As for its use among gay men, I'd love to read a history of it as a phenomenon. (Sadly, good histories of gay culture are rare, and I've never found one that tells me all I want to know about Polari.)

On the subject of rhyming slang, there was an edition of QI in which Stephen Fry brilliantly rattled off a whole stream of it - most of which he'd made up for the occasion. If it's on youtube, I'll post a link later.

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quetzalcoatl
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I notice that some of the studies of rhymes divide them into categories, e.g. traditional, modern and mockney, seems to be quite a common division.

This is OK, I suppose, but it almost suggests that some rhymes are more genuine or authentic than others, which I don't agree with.

If somebody is doing mockney, and making up daft rhymes, in order to lark about or take the piss, that is still using rhymes.

OK, the 80 year old costermonger down the Mile End Rd might still talk about going up the apples, but it's daft to rate that as somehow more kosher than Stephen Fry making up Polari rhymes on TV.

It's the linguistic inventiveness that's interesting, and goes on in slang generally. The fact that people are still using rhymes and backslang and other stuff, is very Robin Hood.

Hell, if I was 40 years younger, I would be out on the street, recording this stuff, it's the dog's bollocks.

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Curiosity killed ...

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You'll be lucky to find a costermonger on the Mile End Road and if you do find one the chances of them speaking English aren't that great.

And the reason I named the East End areas is that cockneys were traditionally born within earshot of Bow Bells. (Like my mother)

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quetzalcoatl
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Just a note on back slang (hell, the mods will have to lock this thread, to shut me up now), there are many types.

The pure classical type, as you might say, inverts words, hence 'klim' for milk.

The one commonly used by kids is a kind of pig Latin, which takes the first consonant of the word to the back, followed by 'ay' or some other suffix, hence, 'oday uyay iklay to iskay?', do you like to kiss?

There are others which stick something in the middle of the word, hence 'doargy you likargy to iskargy?'.

Butcher's slang put some vowels in to make the new word easier, hence, 'elrig' for girl. The secretive nature of it is shown in something like, 'cool at the gib tee-serbs on that el-rig', look at the big breasts on that girl.

There are some nice doubles also, e.g. butcher's slang for four was 'rofe', which became 'French loaf', shortened to French.

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Bob Two-Owls
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quote:
Originally posted by Sioni Sais:
(I'm sure ecaf is polari, btw. Bona polari)

Is the polari word not "eek", from ecaf, as in "Julian! how bona to vada your dolly old eek!"?

Who said Round the Horne wasn't educational...

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quetzalcoatl
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Actually, ecaf should be face, not cafe, in Polari.

I think cafe would be riff raff in rhyming, (or even Colonel Gadaffi), not sure about back slang. In Swedish, 'fika' is a break, back slang from 'kaffi' (I think).

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quetzalcoatl
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Some French back slang:

un keum (man), back from 'mec'; une meuf (woman), from 'femme'; un keuf (police), from 'flic'; looc (cool), back from English cool; beur, from arabe; reub, back from beur; feuk, back from keuf (two double back slangs here); cefran, back from francais; feca, back from cafe.

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Bob Two-Owls
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quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
Actually, ecaf should be face, not cafe, in Polari.

Yes that is the sense in which I quoted it, "how bona to vada your dolly old eek" translates as "how lovely to see your dear old face" - I missed the original post linking it to cafe. What with backslang, polari and rhyming this is getting hard to follow!
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quetzalcoatl
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Yes, my fault, as I quoted 'ecaf' as meaning cafe, but I think that's wrong, it's the old Polari word for face. Any fool know cafe is Colonel Gadaffi!

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quetzalcoatl
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I kept thinking, what the hell is cappuccino, and of course, it's Al Pacino.

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Ariel
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Backslang and thieves' cant have been around for some centuries. The Gull's Hornbook, by Thomas Dekker, written in the 1600s, goes into interesting detail about a fairly well-established language quite likely much older. (The Gull is the street-smart man about town of those days.) Most subcultures have at least a few words of their own. The more developed the vocabulary the more likely it is that the group doesn't want outsiders to understand what's being said. Costermongers' argot was pretty much a private language with, when they got going, virtually none of the nouns or verbs being recognizable to outsiders.

One of the first studies of linguistic subcultures was done by George Borrow in the Victorian era, who wrote Lavengro, a fascinating study of his time spent with the gypsies, and you'll find some of the Romany words he cites - "pal", "chav" and "kushti" being three of the better-known ones - that have also slipped into modern colloquial speech.

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quetzalcoatl
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This is a nice piss-take of Cockney - warning, absolutely tons of swearing.

Note some of the rhymes, are you 'aving a bubble bath? (laugh); see this moody boat (race = face).

'Oo the fack eats 'addock?'

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0kwWeuTq5E

The first guy who goes in the shop - I had a client exactly like that. You fink I'm a mug? You 'aving a turkish?

[ 09. October 2013, 18:01: Message edited by: quetzalcoatl ]

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JoannaP
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quote:
Originally posted by Firenze:
But it also brings up the point that the primary transmission for linguistic subsets is mass media.

Indeed. When I was an undergraduate in Liverpool 20+ years ago, it was quite common to hear students using rhyming slang they had picked up from Minder.

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Edith
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My husband - SE London born and bred, uses it all the time and was astonished when I failed to understand him when we first met. All the terms above are familar to me, but I was foxed by Foc. I thought it might be rather rude, but then I discovered that it was Father of the Chapel.

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quetzalcoatl
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Very exciting for all completists - apparently there is a record of 'April in Paris' for arse, in 'Fools and Horses'.

So a triple seems to be officially recorded. What joy! Time for a Turkish.

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Adeodatus
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Mr Fry is very funny.
(And uses "three stops down from Plaistow," which I'd never come across till I read it upthread.)

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Albertus
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quote:
Originally posted by Sioni Sais:
quote:
Originally posted by piglet:
quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
... Nuremberg (trials) for piles ...

I remember someone complaining he was suffering from "Dukes" (Duke of Argylls).
Cockneys must have sufered from these for years because "the Chalfonts" and the Farmers" are two more.

(I'm sure ecaf is polari, btw. Bona polari)

And I've heard Bernards (Bernard Miles) and Sigmunds (Sigmund Freuds= haemmorhoids, or however you spell it) although how genuine that latter one is I don't know.

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Albertus
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[QUOTE]Originally posted by Adeodatus:
Mr Fry is very funny.
(And uses "three stops down from Plaistow," which I'd never come across till I read it upthread.)
[/QUOTE}
Nor had I, though I was familiar with, and sometimes use, 'Upminster' ( = eight, or whatever it is, stops beyond Barking).

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