A tribute to British slang

[Deleted]

I don't know about other English speaking countries, but I do know that Americans are always very impressed, as well as flummoxed, by the incredible variety and sometimes imperviousness of British slang. Here is an excellent article from the BBC about the joy of slang.

I myself am mystified by some of the terms on the ATM screen that illustrates the article. In fact, "moolah" is about the last word that I fully understand in that illustration, although a slight knowledge of rhyming slang makes it possible to figure out a bit of it.

[Deleted]

Here's an adjunct to your link, Kerouac, that may help to explain more.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-17535156

[Deleted]

Yes, that does clear things up, thanks! I have always been rather impervious to Cockney parlance, basically because the rhymes are generally with words that mean little or nothing to me.

[Deleted]

Well, I think the point of rhyming slang was that it was supposed to be impenetrable to outsiders, i.e. anyone not from the East End of London. I know some of it from watching old British tv show, movies and reading books but yes, I'm often confused. My favourite was "Bristols" for women's breasts; I recently found out it's rhyming for "Bristol Cities" (titties).

[Deleted]

I have always wondered how long it takes these people to understand each other. They can't actually make any annoucements along the lines of "starting tomorrow 'William Hurt' will be used to replace the word 'shirt.'"

[Deleted]

All this consensus was reached in the pub, K. Never underestimate the influence of the British pub. I never realised how powerful until I lived there.

And of course, you would call it a "William" not a "William Hurt", or perhaps even a "Bill".

[Deleted]

That would tend to imply that most ladies have little say in this language construction. It would be super interesting if they had had a good gathering place to create their own slang. It would be extremely fascinating if the women and the men had totally different terms for everything.

[Deleted]

I'm not sure how old rhyming slang is, but I'm sure that women aren't being left out of its creation these days. Women are everywhere in the pubs! But yes, it's true, there is "trouble" for a wife (trouble and strife), but I'm pretty sure there is nothing equivalent for husband (does anything rhyme with husband?)

[Deleted]

And the authoritative source:

www.cockneyrhymingslang.co.uk

[lagatta]

"Yob" goes back a long way. Women can be yobs nowadays, innit? I first heard "salmon"(and don't know whether I heard it first in French or in English) in reference to cyclists who pedal against the flow of traffic, in particular on busy streets.

Yes, verlan, like rioplatense lunfardo, especially "vesre", is more based on reversing words, but not always in a straightforward way. And obviously, verlan also draws on Magrebi Arab and Berber, and Lunfardo, heavily on Italian, as well as Yiddish and other "immigrant", non-Spanish languages.

[questa]

Cockney slang is very common in Australia, although the younger people don't use it now.
During WW2 the prisoners of the Japanese at Changi used it to communicate with each other so the specially English language trained guards could not understand them.

Still quite common to hear a bloke call his friend "china" (china plate = mate)

[patricklondon]

Odd variants survive in general parlance, sometimes without people knowing where they came from, for example, my family (but maybe not that many others) will sometimes say "Let's have a butcher's" (+hook= look). And I've read someone's claim (on what authority I don't know) that the term "berk" for a irritating idiot is a contraction of "Berkeley Hunt".

There are various streams by which these come into the language - there has been quite a rich vein (now dying off) from the kind of pidgin Hindi or Arabic that soldiers picked up in various overseas adventures, like "char" for tea, "doolally" (from the military mental asylum at Deolali), or in the East End, some criminal slang came from Yiddish. Then again, there's "polari" which became a secret language for gays, but draws on bits of Italian from travelling theatrical troupes, combined with backslang and rhyming slang. But quite a lot of "modern" rhyming slang is rather obviously invented for effect, rather than to make a private code.

And as for gendering, the classes that disapproved of women going into pubs wouldn't use rhyming slang anyway; among those that did, there were plenty of women who went into pubs, whether it was to keep an eye on their husbands, or provide entertainment for someone else's. Most slang is and was to keep out the forces of respectability and authority.