Multilingual Rhyming Slang

[Jonathon Green]

> 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.

Whether it was 'hoods' in Chicago (more likely conmen or pickpockets, who
then as now left Australia for the lucrative streets of the US and UK), or,
as I tend to believe, merchant seamen docking in American ports, one might
note that the first discussion of rhyming slang in the US - David Maurer
'Australian Rhyming Argot in the American Underworld' in American Speech
Oct. 1944 - dealt with what was then a prevalent US belief: that the
phenomenon was 'Australian.'  Maurer, working with Australia's then leading
slang expert Sidney Baker,  offered a representative glossary through which
he exploded that theory and acknowledged that rhyming slang was primarily
British. That said, his reliance on Baker, who deplored rhyming slang and
whose dictionaries downplay its long and lively presence in his country, may
have skewed his essay. Australia was, and as Professor Sussex says, remains,
the greatest enthusiast for and originator of the lexicon outside the UK.

Jonathon Green