Multilingual Rhyming Slang

[Jonathon Green]

> Sure, we've all heard of Cockney Rhyming Slang, but clearly other
> rhyming slangs exist. There must be many examples of phrases being
> spoken because they rhyme with phrases in other languages - thus
> multilingual rhyming slang.

'Clearly'? I'm not so sure. Whatever its origins - 19C Irish 'navvies'
working on British railways and canals; London street balladeers; or, as
ever with slang, villains seeking to fool the authorities - rhyming slang
seems to have been, and remains an English language phenomenon. And as such
almost invariably rhymes with English terms. That it spread to Australia,
where it still flourishes, and appears briefly (primarily 1920s-40s) in
America, is undeniable. But I still can't find an input from immigrants. I
have around 3000 such terms, dead and alive, on my database. Of these I have
unearthed a couple: 'flour mixer' = 'shikse' (Yiddish: a gentile female) and
the Australian 'cook', which means a glance, and while it may rhyme simply
on look, may equally well come from Yid. 'geb a guck', take a look. There
may be more, but I don't have them, and nor do other collectors of the
rhyming slang lexicon. The once-strong Jewish, and thus Yiddish presence in
Cockney London undoubtedly contributed to 'mainstream' slang, but not to its
rhyming subset. Might I suggest that the innate 'London-ness' of the
vocabulary means that the rhymes are almost variably 'English'. Rhyming
slang may preserve the names of century-dead music-hall (vaudeville) stars
and rhyme both Germaine Greer and Britney Spears with 'beer' but funny
foreign stuff? On yer bike, squire!

Jonathon Green