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Month: December 2017

Kaliarda XVIII: Sechidou

By: | Post date: 2017-12-06 | Comments: 2 Comments
Posted in categories: Linguistics, Modern Greek

Irini Sechidou’s recent paper compares Kaliarda with three para-Romani languages of Greek—that is, mixed languages with some core Romani vocabulary, but which use the grammar of the gadjo language. (She does not use the term para-Romani in this paper, but she does elsewhere). The three languages are Dortika, the builders’ cant of Eurytania; the less […]

Kaliarda XVII: Bourganis, Paxinos, Faltaits

By: | Post date: 2017-12-04 | Comments: 5 Comments
Posted in categories: Linguistics, Modern Greek

We saw that police reporter Spiros Leotsakos reported in 1963 that police officers Paxinos and Bourganis had recorded the underworld slangs of their time, and compiled glossaries. And one of those slangs, which Leotsakos says Bourganis recorded, was Lubinistika—as the language of female prostitutes rather than gay bottoms. The Lubinistika he recorded may not have […]

Kaliarda XVI: Leotsakos

By: | Post date: 2017-12-02 | Comments: 3 Comments
Posted in categories: Culture, Linguistics, Modern Greek

Spatholouro’s finds continue. This time, he has reproduced material on Kaliarda from police reporter Spiros Leotsakos, writing in 1963 in Αστυνομικά Χρονικά [Police Chronicles]. The first excerpt, from Vol. 233, 1963–02-01, confirms the use of Kaliarda by female prostitutes—or at least of a Romani-based cant, which by then may have been quite distinct from Kaliarda. […]

Kaliarda XV: Triantafyllidis’ Glancing Mention

By: | Post date: 2017-12-02 | Comments: 1 Comment
Posted in categories: Linguistics, Modern Greek

Petropoulos in his second edition accused the linguist Manolis Triantafyllidis of academic dishonesty, in the minimal information he gave about Kaliarda in his work on cants (which we saw included his important work on the builders’ cant Dortika, which is also based on Romani); he claims Triantafyllidis had researched Kaliarda extensively, but was too scared […]

Kaliarda XIV: The schematicism of Kaliarda

By: | Post date: 2017-12-01 | Comments: 3 Comments
Posted in categories: Linguistics, Modern Greek

Kaliarda is unintelligible on purpose, although you need to see extended instances for that to be obvious: not the song parodies that Petropoulos put in his appendix, which are merely Kaliarda-coloured Greek, or the Kaliarda you can find now on YouTube, but pieces like Pavrianos’ song Kaliardosynes, or indeed Klynn’s skit “Won’t One Faggot Speak […]

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