Re:Polari, the Lost Gay English Dialect
by graham-miln on Sunday August 23, 2015 @05:56AM
(#10105143)
You can listen to Round the Horne and The Navy Lark today on BBC iPlayer:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00c7q4l/episodes/player
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00bfvkd/episodes/player
Liverpool's Maritime Museum has an insightful exhibit on gay life at sea; the exhibit includes a section on the polari:
http://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/maritime/visit/floor-plan...
I'm always astonished as to hows fresh Round the Horne sounds even today, when many of the comedy programmes of that era sound distinctly dated. Still funny, worth a listen.
Re:Polari, the Lost Gay English Dialect
by BenDaglish on Sunday August 23, 2015 @06:10AM
(#10105161)
...and, co-incidentally, there's also available at the moment a documentary about Julian and Sandy - http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b007jwhr
Incidentally, Morrissey had a single 'Piccadilly Palari' about male prostitution in the Piccadilly circus area in which he included polari cant.
Re:Polari, the Lost Gay English Dialect
by TazeTSchnitzel on Sunday August 23, 2015 @06:35AM
(#10105192)
Well, even if much of its content is taken up by regular English, it's still dying.
Re:Polari, the Lost Gay English Dialect
by TazeTSchnitzel on Sunday August 23, 2015 @08:10PM
(#10107288)
English took a lot of vocabulary from Norman French, but that doesn't mean Norman French is alive, for example.
Me to now looking back I am surprised the way round the horn got away with so much
There's an excellent Julian and Sandy sketch where they run a web design agency - http://tjathurman.tumblr.com/post/124925252596/information-b...
As I'm sure you know but others might not, that's not a "real" Julian and Sandy sketch.
Edit: The classic Julian and Sandy sketches were recorded between 1965 and 1968. The last one was a reunion in 1987, shortly before Kenneth Williams' death.
I grew up listening to recordings of "Round the Horne" in the UK, which included two characters Julian & Sandy that chatted a little in Polari during their sketches. A bunch of Polari words and phrases have migrated into general UK slang — so it's not really a case of dying out… more migrating and changing — as languages & dialects often do.