Back slang is an
English
English usually refers to:
* English language
* English people
English may also refer to:
Peoples, culture, and language
* ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England
** English national ide ...
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
butcher
A butcher is a person who may Animal slaughter, slaughter animals, dress their flesh, sell their meat, or participate within any combination of these three tasks. They may prepare standard cuts of meat and poultry for sale in retail or wholesal ...
s and
greengrocer
A greengrocer is a person who owns or operates a shop selling primarily fruit and vegetables. The term may also be used to refer to a shop selling primarily produce. It is used predominantly in the United Kingdom and Australia.
In the United ...
s, for private conversations behind their customers' backs and to pass off lower-quality goods to less-observant customers.
The first published reference to it was in 1851, in
Henry Mayhew
Henry Mayhew (25 November 1812 – 25 July 1887) was an English journalist, playwright, and advocate of reform. He was one of the co-founders of the satirical magazine ''Punch'' in 1841, and was the magazine's joint editor, with Mark Lemon, in ...
's ''
London Labour and the London Poor
''London Labour and the London Poor'' is a work of Victorian journalism by Henry Mayhew. In the 1840s, he observed, documented and described the state of working people in London for a series of articles in a newspaper, the ''Morning Chronicle'', ...
''.
Some back slang has entered Standard English. For example, the term ''
yob'' was originally back slang for "boy". Back slang is not restricted to words spoken phonemically backwards. English frequently makes use of
diphthong
A diphthong ( ; , ), also known as a gliding vowel, is a combination of two adjacent vowel sounds within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: that is, the tongue (and/or other parts of the speech o ...
s, which is an issue for back slang since diphthongs cannot be reversed. The resulting fix slightly alters the traditional back slang. An example is ''trousers'' and its diphthong, ''ou'', which is replaced with ''wo'' in the back slang version ''reswort''.
Back slang is said to be used in
prison
A prison, also known as a jail, gaol (dated, standard English, Australian, and historically in Canada), penitentiary (American English and Canadian English), detention center (or detention centre outside the US), correction center, correc ...
s by
inmates
The Inmates are a British pub rock band, which formed after the split of The Flying Tigers in 1977. In 1982, they had a medium-sized international hit with a cover of The Standells' "Dirty Water", and a UK Top 40 hit with their cover of Jimmy M ...
to make it more difficult for
prison wardens to listen into prisoners' conversations and find out what is being said.
In 2010, back slang was reported to have been adopted for the sake of privacy on foreign tennis courts by the young English players
Laura Robson
Laura Robson (born 21 January 1994) is a British former professional tennis player. She debuted on the ITF Junior Circuit in 2007, and a year later won the Junior Wimbledon championships at the age of 14. As a junior, she also twice reached th ...
and
Heather Watson
Heather Miriam Watson (born 19 May 1992) is a British professional tennis player. A former British No. 1, Watson has won nine titles over her career, including the mixed-doubles title at the 2016 Wimbledon Championships partnering Henri K ...
.
*
French ''
verlan
() is a type of argot in the French language, featuring inversion of syllables in a word, and is common in slang and youth language. It rests on a long French tradition of transposing syllables of individual words to create slang words. The wor ...
'', in which e.g. ''français''
ʁɑ̃sɛbecomes ''céfran''
efʁɑ̃
*
French ''
louchébem
''Louchébem'' or ''loucherbem'' () is Parisian and Lyonnaise butchers' ( French ''boucher'') slang, similar to Pig Latin and Verlan. It originated in the mid-19th century and was in common use until the 1950s.
Process
The ''louchébem'' word-cr ...
'', which relies on syllables inversion too, but also adds extra syllables;
*
Greek
Greek may refer to:
Greece
Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe:
*Greeks, an ethnic group.
*Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family.
**Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...
''
podana'' (e.g. the word ''βυζί'' becomes ''ζυβί'');
*
IsiXhosa
Xhosa (, ) also isiXhosa as an endonym, is a Nguni language and one of the official languages of South Africa and Zimbabwe. Xhosa is spoken as a first language by approximately 8.2 million people and by another 11 million as a second ...
&
isiZulu
Zulu (), or isiZulu as an endonym, is a Southern Bantu language of the Nguni branch spoken in Southern Africa. It is the language of the Zulu people, with about 12 million native speakers, who primarily inhabit the province of KwaZulu-Natal of ...
Ilwimi/Ulwimi used mostly by teenagers, often called "high school language";
*
Japanese
Japanese may refer to:
* Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia
* Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan
* Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture
** Japanese diaspor ...
''tougo'' (
倒語), where
moras of a word are inverted and vowels sometimes become long vowels (''hara'', “stomach”, becomes ''raaha'');
*
Romanian
Romanian may refer to:
*anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Romania
**Romanians, an ethnic group
**Romanian language, a Romance language
***Romanian dialects, variants of the Romanian language
**Romanian cuisine, traditional ...
Totoiana
Totoiana ("Totoian"), also known as the "Totoian language" ( ro, Limba totoiană) or the "inverted language" ( ro, Limba întoarsă, link=no), is a speech form used in the village of Totoi in Alba County, Romania. It is unique to the village an ...
, in which syllables of Romanian words are inverted so that other Romanian speakers can not understand it;
*
Lunfardo
Lunfardo (; from the Italian ''lombardo'' or inhabitant of Lombardy in the local dialect) is an argot originated and developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries in the lower classes in Buenos Aires and from there spread to other urban are ...
, a
Spanish
Spanish might refer to:
* Items from or related to Spain:
**Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain
**Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries
**Spanish cuisine
Other places
* Spanish, Ontario, Cana ...
argot
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 ...
spoken in
Argentina
Argentina (), officially the Argentine Republic ( es, link=no, República Argentina), is a country in the southern half of South America. Argentina covers an area of , making it the second-largest country in South America after Brazil, th ...
, includes words in ''
vesre
Vesre (reversing the order of syllables within a word) is one of the features of Rioplatense Spanish slang. Natives of Argentina and Uruguay use vesre sparingly in colloquial speaking, and rarely in formal circumstances. Tango lyrics make widespr ...
'' (from ''revés'', literally "backwards");
*
Šatrovački
''Šatrovački'' (; Serbian Cyrillic: шатровачки) or ''šatra'' (; Serbian Cyrillic: шатра) is an argot within the Serbo-Croatian language. Šatrovački was initially developed by various subcultures in Yugoslavia, and became emp ...
, a
Serbo-Croatian-Bosnian slang system;
* 19th century
Swedish
Swedish or ' may refer to:
Anything from or related to Sweden, a country in Northern Europe. Or, specifically:
* Swedish language, a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Sweden and Finland
** Swedish alphabet, the official alphabet used by ...
(e.g. the word ''
fika,'' which means approximately "coffee break").
See also
*
Costermonger
A costermonger, coster, or costard is a street seller of fruit and vegetables in British towns. The term is derived from the words ''costard'' (a medieval variety of apple) and ''monger'' (seller), and later came to be used to describe hawkers i ...
(British street vendors from whom back slang originates)
*
Pig Latin
Pig Latin is a language game or argot in which words in English are altered, usually by adding a fabricated suffix or by moving the onset or initial consonant or consonant cluster of a word to the end of the word and adding a vocalic syllable ...
References
External links
Victorian Web Article
English-based argots
English language in England
Language games
British slang
{{ling-stub