As my final piece commemorating February’s LGBTQ+ History Month, I thought I’d take a ‘vada’ at some facts about something a little different.
It may come as a surprise to some, but there was actually a secret language used by the gay subculture in times gone by. No, I’m not talking about the modern day shrieks of “Yaaaaas Queen!” Or “Werk, Bitch” or any of the modern day catchphrases brought to us from drag culture, that’s another conversation we might have at some point. I’m talking about Polari.
If you think the name ‘Polari’ sounds vaguely Italian, you’d be right, as this secret language borrows certain words and sounds from Italian and Latin and the name derives from ‘parlare’, the Italian for ‘to talk’.
It’s a mostly slang language thought to have been in use mostly during the 1700s and 1800s but possibly as far back as the 16th Century. It’s origins mostly trace back to groups of actors, circus workers, fairground showmen, wrestlers, sailors, sex workers and criminals, but has also been heavily associated with members of gay subculture, as its role as a slang, pseudo-language made it ideal for undercover or illicit communication in order to avoid persecution or detection.
Its use in the 19th Century among performers , fairgrounds, circuses and markets saw an influence in the language from Romani and London slang in addition to the Italian and Latin influences, backslang and thieves’ cant (a cryptolect, or form of coded communication, used by criminal subcultures to keep their activities quiet). It later evolved to contain components of Yiddish language and drug subculture as it progressed through the middle of the 20th Century.
It’s use by the gay community came from the necessity of being able to communicate and socialise undercover due to the illegal status of homosexual relationships up until 1967. It wasn’t unheard of for policemen to work undercover to try and find homosexuals, so Polari was a means of communicating that only a real member of the community would understand. It allowed clandestine conversations to happen in plain sight and allowed people to greet each other, arrange meetings or even have a good gossip without anyone nearby actually realising what was being said. There were even ways of giving coded warnings that could be passed openly with only those intended picking up on it. Many pieces still live on as key components of gay slang today. For example, not many would know what anyone meant by ‘He blagged some rough trade at the cottage’ is a sentence mainly composed of Polari, but most British gay men (probably over 35) would probably get that it meant ‘he had sex with a rough straight man at the public toilets’ – see, a way of talking secretly picking up guys in public, but almost entirely in code. As someone slightly younger, of course, this is the sort of language I heard in my early days around the scene and it’s sort of been passed down, so here’s me passing it down in return.
The language itself is mostly constructed around a core lexicon of only about twenty words, with ‘bona’ meaning ‘good’, ‘eek’ meaning ‘face’ and so on, varying combinations of these twenty core words would combine with a few others, sometimes rhyming slang, to create something almost normal sounding to the casual listener, but different enough to be considered a foreign language rather than a secret conversation. There were also instances of there being regional dialects of Polari, with rumoured variations in London of ‘East End’, with a more cockney rhyming feel and ‘West End’ which sounded more classical, refined and theatrical, mostly due to it being spoken around London’s West-End, home of a huge number of theatres and performance spaces and home to the more theatrical community, itself encompassing large numbers of LGBTQ+ members.
There are still quite a few pieces of Polari in our everyday vocabularies today. For instance, ‘naff’ as a negative term, while its etymology isn’t completely certain, originates in Polari and has entered our common lexicon today. ‘Khazi’ as a slang for toilet, ‘bevvy’ for drink , ‘barney’ for fight, all come from Polari. Even terms like ‘camp’ to describe showy, exaggerated or effeminate qualities comes from Polari, along with ‘butch’ as a term for ‘manly’ come from the same. It’s actually fascinating after doing my research on Polari just how much of the lexicon I’ve picked up over the years comes from this intriguing secret language. Even more so that once it wasn’t needed anymore, it was somehow integrated into regular language to stick around, proving that language is a constantly evolving thing. It’s quite nice in a way that pieces of it have stuck around rather than being lost and I’d encourage some reading on Polari and learn just how many of the words will actually be familiar to you.
Of course, it would be horribly remiss to call this The only secret gay language. As I mentioned at the beginning, phrases like ‘Yaaaaas Queen’, and many of the other terms brought to us by Drag Race and American drag culture came from underground lexicons from LGBTQ+ folk on that side of the Atlantic, but that’s a story for another time.
So, had you heard of Polari? Perhaps you even know how to speak it! If so, share what you know in the comments, as I’d love to hear more. And till next time, have a ‘bona’ day, stay safe, stay sane and stay… Vidalicious!
