Thursday, July 03, 2008

Ponglish and Piccadilly Palare



It seems that Poles in the UK have started speaking a mixture of Polish and English known as Ponglish. Read all about it here. It's nothing new though, immigrants have developed strange hybrid languages over the centuries and have influenced the native language too.

Even schoolboys have been at it. When I was at school in the 70s kids spoke their own language called 'backslang'. I often wonder if that influenced Manchester music legend Morrissey who wrote the brilliant 'Piccadilly Palare':

The piccadilly palare
Was just silly slang
Between me and the boys in my gang
Exchanging palare
You wouldnt understand
Good sons like you
Never do.


In this it was a means of communicating without parents and 'good sons' finding out what they were up to. In the past gays had their own lingo, adapted by Kenneth Williams for comedy purposes, and cockney rhyming slang came about so that criminals could communicate without the police understanding them.

So now you know!