Back slang is an
English coded language in which the written word is spoken
phonetically backwards.
Usage
Back slang is thought to have originated in
Victorian England. It was used mainly by market sellers, such as
butcher
A butcher is a person who may Animal slaughter, slaughter animals, dress their flesh, sell their meat, or participate within any combination of these three tasks. They may prepare standard cuts of meat and poultry for sale in retail or wholesale ...
s and
greengrocer
A greengrocer is a person who owns or operates a shop selling primarily produce, fruit and vegetables. The term may also be used to refer to a shop selling primarily produce. It is used predominantly in the United Kingdom and Australia.
In the ...
s, for private conversations behind their customers' backs and to pass off lower-quality goods to less-observant customers.
The first published reference to it was in 1851, in
Henry Mayhew
Henry Mayhew (25 November 1812 – 25 July 1887) was an English journalist, playwright, and advocate of reform. He was one of the co-founders of the satirical magazine '' Punch'' in 1841, and was the magazine's joint editor, with Mark Lemon, in ...
's ''
London Labour and the London Poor''.
Some back slang has entered Standard English. For example, the term ''
yob'' was originally back slang for "boy". Back slang is not restricted to words spoken phonemically backwards. English frequently makes use of
diphthong
A diphthong ( ), also known as a gliding vowel or a vowel glide, is a combination of two adjacent vowel sounds within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: that is, the tongue (and/or other parts of ...
s, which is an issue for back slang since diphthongs cannot be reversed. The resulting fix slightly alters the traditional back slang. An example is ''trousers'' and its diphthong, ''ou'', which is replaced with ''wo'' in the back slang version ''reswort''.
In 2010, back slang was reported to have been adopted for the sake of privacy on foreign tennis courts by the young English players
Laura Robson and
Heather Watson
Heather Miriam Watson (born 19 May 1992) is a British professional tennis player. A former British No. 1, Watson has won nine titles over her career, including the mixed-doubles title at the 2016 Wimbledon Championships – Mixed doubles, 2016 ...
.
Other languages
Other languages have similar coded forms but reversing the order of
syllable
A syllable is a basic unit of organization within a sequence of speech sounds, such as within a word, typically defined by linguists as a ''nucleus'' (most often a vowel) with optional sounds before or after that nucleus (''margins'', which are ...
s rather than phonemes. These include:
*
French ''
verlan
The verlan word "pineco" comes from "copine".
() is a type of argot in the French language, featuring inversion of syllables in a word, and is common in slang and youth language. It rests on a long French tradition of transposing syllables of in ...
'', in which e.g. ''français''
ʁɑ̃sɛbecomes ''céfran''
efʁɑ̃
*
French ''
louchébem
or () is Parisian and Lyonnaise butchers' ( French ) slang, similar to Pig Latin and Verlan. It originated in the mid-19th century and was in common use until the 1950s.
Process
The word-creation process resembles that of , , and , in that e ...
'', which relies on syllables inversion too, but also adds extra syllables;
*
Greek
Greek may refer to:
Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe:
*Greeks, an ethnic group
*Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family
**Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor of all kno ...
''
podaná'' (e.g. the word ''βυζί'' becomes ''ζυβί'');
*
IsiXhosa
Xhosa ( , ), formerly spelled ''Xosa'' and also known by its local name ''isiXhosa'', is a Bantu language, indigenous to Southern Africa and one of the official languages of South Africa and Zimbabwe.
Xhosa is spoken as a first language ...
&
isiZulu
Zulu ( ), or isiZulu as an endonym, is a Southern Bantu language of the Nguni branch spoken in, and indigenous to, Southern Africa. Nguni dialects are regional or social varieties of the Nguni language, distinguished by vocabulary, pronunciatio ...
Ilwimi/Ulwimi used mostly by teenagers, often called "high school language";
*
Japanese ''tougo'' (
倒語), where
moras of a word are inverted and vowels sometimes become long vowels (''hara'', “stomach”, becomes ''raaha'');
*
Romanian Totoiana
Totoiana ("Totoian"), also known as the "Totoian language" () or the "inverted language" (), is a speech form used in the village of Totoi in Alba County, Romania. It is unique to the village and not spoken in the other villages that form part o ...
, in which syllables of Romanian words are inverted so that other Romanian speakers can not understand it;
*
Lunfardo
Lunfardo (; from the Italian ) is an argot originated and developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries in the lower classes in the Río de la Plata region (encompassing the port cities of Buenos Aires in Argentina and Montevideo in Uruguay) ...
, a
Spanish
Spanish might refer to:
* Items from or related to Spain:
**Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain
**Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many countries in the Americas
**Spanish cuisine
**Spanish history
**Spanish culture
...
argot
A cant is the jargon or language of a group, often employed to exclude or mislead people outside the group.McArthur, T. (ed.) ''The Oxford Companion to the English Language'' (1992) Oxford University Press It may also be called a cryptolect, argo ...
spoken in
Argentina
Argentina, officially the Argentine Republic, is a country in the southern half of South America. It covers an area of , making it the List of South American countries by area, second-largest country in South America after Brazil, the fourt ...
, includes words in ''
vesre
Vesre (from Spanish ''(al) revés'' 'reverse') is the reversing of the order of syllables within a word in Spanish. It is a feature of Rioplatense Spanish slang and Tango lyrics, and is associated with lunfardo.
Vesre is mostly from Buenos Air ...
'' (from ''revés'', literally "backwards");
*
Šatrovački, a
Serbo-Croatian-Bosnian slang system;
* 19th century
Swedish (e.g. the word ''
fika,'' which means approximately "coffee break").
*
Sheng (e.g. ''ngware'' becomes ''rengwa)''
See also
*
Costermonger
A costermonger, coster, or costard is a street seller of fruit and vegetables in British towns. The term is derived from the words ''Costard (apple), costard'' (a medieval variety of apple) and ''monger'' (seller), and later came to be used to des ...
(British street vendors from whom back slang originates)
*
Pig Latin
References
External links
Victorian Web Article
English-based argots
English language in England
Language games
British slang
{{English-lang-stub