An troductn to Polari, the old Brish gay slang, cludg a word list.
Contents:
- THIS SECRET LANGUAGE ALLOWED GAY MEN TO COMMUNITE WHEN HOMOSEXUALY WAS ILLEGAL
- GAY SLANG OM THE 1970S
- GAYLE: THE LANGUAGE OF APARTHEID SOUTH AI’S GAY UNRGROUND
- DICK LESCH’S GUI TO SEVENTI GAY SLANG
THIS SECRET LANGUAGE ALLOWED GAY MEN TO COMMUNITE WHEN HOMOSEXUALY WAS ILLEGAL
If you were a gay man livg England the mid-20th century you might greet your iends wh How bona to varda your dolly old eek.... * 1960 gay language *
If you were a gay man livg England the mid-20th century, you might greet your iends wh ‘How bona to varda your dolly old eek. ’ This secret language, or cryptolect, served to help those the gay muny weed out who was ‘ the life’ and who was not.
GAY SLANG OM THE 1970S
While hazg the lennials durg a meetg today, several of them nfsed to not knowg the basic lexin of gay slanguage. This is for them and everyone else who needs a reher. * 1960 gay language *
View Trip “You’d be standg there at the bar, talkg to a gay iend, [and] you’d notice the person next to him might be listeng. Some may have regnised the dialect as part of the effemate gay male stereotype, but the actual meangs of the words were cipherable to the uniated.
Characters ed phras durg the broadst to imply their homosexualy, and the show was able to pict happy gay men lghg alongsi the dience, stead of beg the butt of the joke. This, bed wh the crimalisatn of homosexual acts 1967, led to a cle age. “The younger gay men were kd of g out the ’70s and they had different valu, ” says lguistic rearcher Pl Baker the 2018 documentary Polari – A Short Documentary About the Lost Language of Gay Men.
GAYLE: THE LANGUAGE OF APARTHEID SOUTH AI’S GAY UNRGROUND
Heavily ed by Brish gays the 1920s bee of anti-homosexual laws, efforts are beg ma to prerve an entirely queer-based slang. * 1960 gay language *
Instead, there are the ncepts like gay pri and gay liberatn and g out. Many Christians, gay and straight alike, were ma unfortable by the chang that turned “Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spir” to “Fabens be to the Auntie, and to the Homie Chavvie, and to the Fantabulosa Fairy”.
As muni ntue to form around LGBTQ inti, Polari exemplifi an important moment gay history.
DICK LESCH’S GUI TO SEVENTI GAY SLANG
* 1960 gay language *
It was a language that brought gay men together and nnected them to a cultural legacy, one that n still be seen slang today – even if many speakers don’t realise to learn Polari?
Check out the Polari app or Fantabulosa: A Dictnary of Polari and Gay Slang. 15 Old-Timey Nam for 'Gay'.