Multilingual Rhyming Slang

[Prof. R. Sussex]

Phillip Trauring asks about multilingual rhyming slang.

I'd be most interested to hear if there are any examples, but I
haven't found any in Australia, a multicultural place with a highly
active use of rhyming slang, AND it's productive: new ones are
arising all the time. For instance Barry Crocker (a well known
personality) = "shocker" = something bad: so
        I've had a shocker of a day
        I've had a Barry Crocker of a day
        I've had a Barry Crocker
        I've had a real Barry - nothing went right
The last two involve the progressive removal of the clues which allow
hearers to recover a possible rhyme - if they didn't know the
allusion in the first place. This is a piece of in-group solidarity,
or obscurity, involving ludic language.

This is a very British / Cockney thing in origin, but lively in some
Commonwealth places (New Zealand, e.g.). Apparently some Australian
hoods went to Chicago around 1925 and took some of their rhyming
slang with them; rumour has it that some survives in the Windy City.

All of that notwithstanding (ah, I have now had my annual use of that
word), multilingual rhyming slang from other languages would be a
curio (echo phrases like "namby pamby" are another matter). "Cashmere
and togas" (new to me) looks like a possible candidate. You'd need a
substantial immigre population speaking another language in the
presence of Anglophones, and probably code-switching, so that the
mis-heard phrase would have some kind of Anglo context in which to be
mis-heard. Though "Cashmere and togas" as an exclamation might have
enough context to make restricted sense.


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Roly Sussex
Professor of Applied Language Studies
Department of French, German, Russian, Spanish and Applied Linguistics
School of Languages and Comparative Cultural Studies
The University of Queensland
Brisbane
Queensland 4072
AUSTRALIA

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