Polari Revival in London Soho

Polari, the famous gay men's slang of Britain, appears to be having another revival. Two articles have just appeared in the British press on its use at the Madame Jo Jo's nightclub in Soho. As the Guardian (1/17/2005) correctly reports, Polari is actually a vestige of Lingua Franca (the earliest known European-based pidgin) which flourished between the 13th and 18th centuries. That is to say, Polari as it continues to be spoken today contains lexical input from medieval Lingua Franca. The name of the language itself derives from Italian/Lingua Franca parlare 'to speak'.

BBC News (1/8/2005) is reporting that words used by the staff at Madame Jo Jo's include aqua 'water,' bona 'good,' dinarli 'money,' fabulousa 'great,' and funt 'pount', and a word list with the article also mentions manjaree 'to eat' (from Lingua Franca mangiare, manjar). The article in the Guardian also notes that linguistics lecturer Paul Baker from Lancaster University gave the club staff a list of Polari words to use. Now that's applied linguistics! BBC News quotes Chris Allan, promotions manager for Madame Jo Jo's, on the use of Polari:

"It's just the ideal thing. We have a real problem when we get members of staff together where some speak, say, French and others Italian, but not everyone has a common language - it is a common problem in the West End. Finding a communal language is not always easy and Polari seemed a good place to start. It's gone down amazingly well with the staff. They have picked it up really quickly, probably because it's made up of elements of their own languages. Polari would have been prevalent when Jojo's first started - there's been a club here since the 50s. In a way we have reinvented Esperanto for the modern clubber."

The Guardian also cites what the owner Paris Tkaczyk has to say on the matter: "By offering staff the option of learning and using Polari to refer to familiar aspects and objects of their work, we are offering a fun, yet practical, way of bridging any language gaps, as well as celebrating the cultural history and diversity of Soho."