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Category: Linguistics
Kaliarda XXII: Minniti-Gonias
Domenica Minniti-Gonias’ study on “Italian and Heptanesian words in Greek slang” (specifically in Kaliarda) is significant because the Italian component of Kaliarda is one of the two core differentiators of Kaliarda from other Greek cants. (The other being its schematic approach to Romani vocabulary.) Montoliu already identified that Italian is a large and old component […]
Kaliarda XXI: Hatzidakis
The discussion on Sarantakos’ blog had derailed from Kaliarda to Lupine beans, because of how Faltaits had rendered Lubinistika as Lupinarika (possibly conflating it with the Roman lupinaria). In bringing the discussion back, Spatholouro popped yet another rabbit out of his archival research. To come back, as we should, from lupines to lubines, I had […]
Kaliarda XX: Tsipis, Antonakos
Sarantakos commenter BLOG_OTI_NANAI has found more two pieces from the Police Chronicles (Αστυνομικά Χρονικά) magazine, which also confirm the association of Lubinistika with both cis female prostitutes and “catamites”. The first comes from 1953, by K. Tsipis: A language of similar type and intent is also widely used in brothels, the circles of catamites, ande […]
Kaliarda XIX: Kostas in Larissa
Commenter Kostas on Sarantakos’ blog offered the following recollection of Kaliarda from the 1970s: I’ve already written this on another past. This is what a passive homosexual used to say, as I recollect it: —dziˈnavis ta javerˈda? —ˈama ðen ˈpesi o berˈdes ðen ˈexi kuraˈverta —θa su kuraverˈtaro ke tin ˈpulia He went around the […]
Kaliarda XVIII: Sechidou
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
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
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
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
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 […]
Kaliarda XIII: The Turkish Gay Cant
I’ve found the paper by Kyuchukov & Bakker on the gay cant of Istanbul. Spatholouro’s find and Montoliu’s had built up my expectations that this would be a carbon copy of Kaliarda, with the same polyglot amusements and compounding hilarity. Maybe it was; but the vocabulary Kyuchukov & Bakker recorded is just straight Romani words—like […]