Book wanted: _The Cant Languages of Europe_

Robin Hamilton robin.hamilton3 at VIRGINMEDIA.COM
Fri Sep 17 16:20:33 UTC 2010


Does anyone know if such a thing as the above book, or anything like it,
exists?

It would be similar to texts dealing with Pidgins and Creoles, and have an
introductory chapter on cant, possibly drawing on M.A.K.Halliday's 1976
article, "Anti-languages", followed by chapters on Rotwelsch, Germania,
Shelta, Peddler's French, etc., possibly with a separate section on the
various European non-inflectional varieties of Romani.

Failing that, is there a central web resource that draws these things
together?

It's possible to make a start piecing together links via Wikipedia, but that
work seems more than usually curate's eggish when it comes to this area.
(The article on [English] "Thieves' cant", for instance, is more than a
little off the wall, though whoever wrote it has at least come across the
Winchester Confessions of 1615-1616, which still isn't that generally
noticed.)

Robin

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