Any outstanding errors in this?

Robin Hamilton robin.hamilton3 at VIRGINMEDIA.COM
Mon Oct 14 11:47:51 UTC 2013


Not a criticism, but I was intrigued by this:

<<
From: Dan Goodman
    ...
Note:  If you know why "Polari" and "Parlari" wouldn't sound the same to
someone from New York City ...
>>

Would it be that the words -- Polari and Parlari -- would be pronounced
differently, or what was said *in Polari or Parlari would be
different --someone speaking Polari would be uttering cant, someone speaking
Parlari simply speaking in Italian?

This might be complicated by the observation that Polari and Parlari are
sometimes used as synonyms for the version of cant which emerges in Britain
in the fifties, with Polari as the commoner variant.

Further complicated, since Polari possibly manifests in three different
forms -- stage Polari, gay Polari (the notorious Julian and Sandy version),
and circus Polari, and that it is the third of these varieties, Circus
Polari, which is sometimes distinguished as Parlari.

(I became interested in this as it's specifically Circus Polari which seems
to show the largest influence of earlier English cant, reaching back to the
beginning of the sixteenth century.)

I'd be interested to see Dan unfold his original point quoted above.

Robin Hamilton

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