Shelta (;

Irish Irish may refer to: Common meanings * Someone or something of, from, or related to: ** Ireland, an island situated off the north-western coast of continental Europe ***Éire, Irish language name for the isle ** Northern Ireland, a constituent unit ...

: ''Seiltis'') is a

language Language is a structured system of communication. The structure of a language is its grammar and the free components are its vocabulary. Languages are the primary means by which humans communicate, and may be conveyed through a variety of met ...

spoken by Rilantu Mincéirí (

Irish Travellers Irish Travellers ( ga, an lucht siúil, meaning "the walking people"), also known as Pavees or Mincéirs (Shelta: Mincéirí), are a traditionally peripatetic indigenous ethno-cultural group in Ireland.''Questioning Gypsy identity: ethnic na ...

), particularly in

Ireland Ireland ( ; ga, Éire ; Ulster Scots dialect, Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean, in Northwestern Europe, north-western Europe. It is separated from Great Britain to its east by the North Channel (Grea ...

and the

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and North ...

.McArthur, T. (ed.) ''The Oxford Companion to the English Language'' (1992)

Oxford University Press Oxford University Press (OUP) is the university press of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world, and its printing history dates back to the 1480s. Having been officially granted the legal right to print books ...

It is widely known as the

Cant Cant, CANT, canting, or canted may refer to: Language * Cant (language), a secret language * Beurla Reagaird, a language of the Scottish Highland Travellers * Scottish Cant, a language of the Scottish Lowland Travellers * Shelta or the Cant, a la ...

, to its native speakers in Ireland as De Gammon, and to the linguistic community as Shelta.Kirk, J. & Ó Baoill (eds.), D. ''Travellers and their Language'' (2002) Queen's University Belfast It was often used as a

cryptolect A cant is the jargon or language of a group, often employed to exclude or mislead people outside the group.McArthur, T. (ed.) ''The Oxford Companion to the English Language'' (1992) Oxford University Press It may also be called a cryptolect, argot ...

to exclude outsiders from comprehending conversations between Travellers, although this aspect is frequently overemphasised. The exact number of native speakers is hard to determine due to sociolinguistic issues but ''

Ethnologue ''Ethnologue: Languages of the World'' (stylized as ''Ethnoloɠue'') is an annual reference publication in print and online that provides statistics and other information on the living languages of the world. It is the world's most comprehensiv ...

'' puts the number of speakers at 30,000 in the UK, 6,000 in Ireland, and 50,000 in the US. The figure for at least the UK is dated to 1990; it is not clear if the other figures are from the same source. Linguistically Shelta is today seen as a

mixed language A mixed language is a language that arises among a bilingual group combining aspects of two or more languages but not clearly deriving primarily from any single language. It differs from a creole or pidgin language in that, whereas creoles/pidgin ...

that stems from a community of travelling people in Ireland that was originally predominantly

-speaking. The community later went through a period of widespread bilingualism that resulted in a language based heavily on

Hiberno-English Hiberno-English (from Latin ''Hibernia'': "Ireland"), and in ga, Béarla na hÉireann. or Irish English, also formerly Anglo-Irish, is the set of English dialects native to the island of Ireland (including both the Republic of Ireland a ...

with heavy influences from Irish. As different varieties of Shelta display different degrees of anglicisation, it is hard to determine the extent of the Irish

substratum In linguistics, a stratum (Latin for "layer") or strate is a language that influences or is influenced by another through contact. A substratum or substrate is a language that has lower power or prestige than another, while a superstratum or sup ...

. The ''Oxford Companion to the English Language'' puts it at 2,000–3,000 words.

Names and etymology

The language is known by various names. People outside the Irish Traveller community often refer to it as '' (the) Cant'', the etymology of which is a matter of debate. Speakers of the language refer to it as ''(the) Cant'', ''Gammon'' or ''Tarri''. Amongst linguists, the name ''Shelta'' is the most commonly used term. Variants of the above names and additional names include ''Bog Latin'', ''Gammon'',Dolan, Terence Patrick (ed.) ''A Dictionary of Hiberno-English'' (2004)

Gill & MacMillan Gill is an independent publisher and distributor based in Dublin, Ireland. History In 1856, Michael Henry Gill, printer for Dublin University, purchased the publishing and bookselling business of James McGlashan, and the company was renamed McG ...

''Sheldru'', ''Shelter'', ''Shelteroch'', ''the Ould Thing'', and ''Tinker's Cant''.

Etymology

The word ''Shelta'' appears in print for the first time in 1882 in the book ''The Gypsies'' by the "gypsiologist"

Charles Leland Charles Godfrey Leland (August 15, 1824 – March 20, 1903) was an American humorist and folklorist, born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He was educated at Princeton University and in Europe. Leland worked in journalism, travelled extensi ...

, who claimed to have discovered it as the "fifth Celtic tongue". The word's etymology has long been a matter of debate. Modern Celticists believe that Irish "to walk" is at the root, either via a term such as "a walker" or a form of the

verbal noun A verbal noun or gerundial noun is a verb form that functions as a noun. An example of a verbal noun in English is 'sacking' as in the sentence "The sacking of the city was an epochal event" (''sacking'' is a noun formed from the verb ''sack''). ...

(cf. ''an lucht siúlta'' , "the walking people" (lit. "the people of walks"), the traditional Irish term for Travellers). The ''Dictionary of Hiberno-English'' cites it as possibly a corruption of the word "Celt". Since Shelta is a mixture of English and Irish grammar, the etymology is not straightforward. The language is made up mostly of Irish lexicon, being classified as a grammar-lexicon language with the grammar being English-based.

Origins and history

Linguist Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Linguis ...

s have been documenting Shelta since at least the 1870s. The first works were published in 1880 and 1882 by Charles Leland. Celtic language expert

Kuno Meyer Kuno Meyer (20 December 1858 – 11 October 1919) was a German scholar, distinguished in the field of Celtic philology and literature. His pro-German stance at the start of World War I in the United States was a source of controversy. His brother ...

and

Romani Romani may refer to: Ethnicities * Romani people, an ethnic group of Northern Indian origin, living dispersed in Europe, the Americas and Asia ** Romani genocide, under Nazi rule * Romani language, any of several Indo-Aryan languages of the Roma ...

expert John Sampson both assert that Shelta existed as far back as the 13th century. In the earliest but undocumented period linguists surmise that the Traveller community was

-speaking until a period of widespread bilingualism in Irish and

(or Scots in Scotland) set in, leading to

creolisation Creolization is the process through which creole languages and cultures emerge. Creolization was first used by linguists to explain how contact languages become creole languages, but now scholars in other social sciences use the term to describe ne ...

(possibly with a trilingual stage). The resulting language is referred to as ''Old Shelta'' and it is suspected that this stage of the language displayed distinctive features, such as non-English syntactic and morphological features, no longer found in Shelta. Within the

diaspora A diaspora ( ) is a population that is scattered across regions which are separate from its geographic place of origin. Historically, the word was used first in reference to the dispersion of Greeks in the Hellenic world, and later Jews after ...

, various sub-branches of Shelta exist. English Shelta is increasingly undergoing

anglicisation Anglicisation is the process by which a place or person becomes influenced by English culture or British culture, or a process of cultural and/or linguistic change in which something non-English becomes English. It can also refer to the influen ...

, while American Irish-Traveller's Cant, originally also synonymous with Shelta, has by now been almost fully anglicised.

Linguistic features

Sociologist Sharon Gmelch describes the Irish Travellers' language as follows: Thus, by design, it is not mutually intelligible with either English or Irish. Shelta is a secret language. Travellers do not like to share the language with outsiders, named “Buffers”, or non-travellers. When speaking Shelta in front of Buffers, Travellers will disguise the structure so as to make it seem like they aren't speaking Shelta at all.

Lexicon

While Shelta is influenced by English grammar, it is also a mixture of Gaelic and Irish words as well. The word order itself is altered, syllables are reversed, and many of the original words are Irish that have been altered or reversed. Many Shelta words have been disguised using techniques such as

back slang Back slang is an English coded language in which the written word is spoken phonemically backwards. Usage Back slang is thought to have originated in Victorian England. It was used mainly by market sellers, such as butchers and greengrocers, f ...

where sounds are transposed (for example ''gop'' "kiss" from Irish ''póg'') or the addition of sounds (for example ''gather'' "father" from Irish ''athair''). Other examples include ''lackin'' or ''lakeen'' "girl" from Irish ''cailín'', and the word ''rodas'' "door" from Irish ''doras''. The word for “son” is changed from the Gaelic ''mac'' to the Shelta ''kam.''

Grammar

Shelta shares its main syntactic features with Hiberno-English and the majority of its morphological features such as -s plurals and past tense markers. Compare: There is not as much importance put on gender in Shelta. Plurals are shown with the English suffix /–s/ or /-i/, such as gloχ for “man” becomes gloχi for “men”.

Phonology

Shelta has 27 consonants and 10 vowels. Many words are complex by incorporating numerous consonants within, as in the word skraχo for “tree, bush’ with the consonant /χ/ being a hissing sound that is held in the back of the throat, and is held longer than other consonants.

Loanwords

Some Shelta words have been borrowed by mainstream English speakers, such as the word "

bloke ''Bloke'' is a slang term for a common man in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. The earliest known usage is from the early 19th century, when it was recorded as a London slang term. The word's origin is un ...

" meaning "a man" in the mid-19th century.Oxford Dictionary – etymology

Orthography

There is no standard orthography. Broadly speaking, Shelta can either be written following an Irish-type orthography or an English-type orthography. For example, the word for "married" can either be spelled ''lósped'' or ''lohsped'', a "woman" can either be spelled ''byohr'' or ''beoir''.

Comparison texts

Below are reproductions of the ''

Lord's Prayer The Lord's Prayer, also called the Our Father or Pater Noster, is a central Christian prayer which Jesus taught as the way to pray. Two versions of this prayer are recorded in the gospels: a longer form within the Sermon on the Mount in the Gosp ...

'' in Shelta as it occurred a century ago, current Shelta, and modern English and Irish versions for comparison. The 19th century Shelta version shows a high Shelta lexical content while the Cant version shows a much lower Shelta lexical content. Both versions are adapted from Hancock who notes that the Cant reproduction is not exactly representative of actual speech in normal situations. .

References

Bibliography

* R. A. Stewart Macalister (1937) ''The Secret Languages of Ireland: with special reference to the origin and nature of the Shelta language, partly based upon collections and manuscripts of the late John Sampson''. Cambridge University Press (reissued by Craobh Rua Books, Armagh, 1997)

External links

Shelta lexicon and pronunciation guide
{{Irish Travellers Cant languages English-based argots English-based pidgins and creoles Irish dialects Macaronic forms of English Irish Travellers Languages of Ireland Languages of the Republic of Ireland