The English language is a funny one. Extremely cosmopolitan, it draws on cultures and languages from our land’s various past invaders – the Romans, the Vikings and the Normans, and that’s certainly not all – to produce the absurd, astounding amalgamation that us natives take for granted and speak with ease. It is usually claimed that English is the second hardest language to master. It’s riddled with silent letters, many words have multiple meanings and there is an obscene amount of synonyms. Considering this, that’s probably true.

However, as if standard English isn’t hard enough to swallow already, English and contemporary culture have given birth to “sub-languages” which though based on English, can really try the patience of people who are uninitiated and want to eavesdrop on a conversation. Never mind codes - communicate using one of these and any eavesdroppers would be none the wiser.

Rhyming Cockney Slang

This is alleged to have originated in the Victorian era, where “Cockneys” would speak in this way to convey a message. True Cockneys, so they say, must be born within earshot of the chiming of the bells at Bow, in London. Rhyming Cockney Slang was most likely used to outwit policemen, who would otherwise know about a planned crime. It is very intricate in its own way, but generally does not obey any sort of logic. Typically, a particular word, generally of one syllable, would be substituted with a short phrase of two to four syllables which rhymes with the word, and then during everyday conversation, that phrase would be shortened, so that effectively one word is replaced with a different one (to maintain the rhythm of the sentence). Here are some examples: “Stairs” becomes “Apples and Pears” which is shortened to “Apples”; ergo “I’ve just fallen down the apples” would be “I’ve just fallen down the stairs”. “Suit” becomes “Whistle and Flute” which shortens to “Whistle”. So “Let me put me whistle on” should now be easy to decode. Try guessing these: “Peckham Rye”; “Conan Doyle”; “Tea Leaf”.

Polari

This language was used mostly in the 1960s, in circles where a certain amount of showmanship was required, such as in circuses, fairgrounds, theatres and fishmarkets. It became common in homosexual society, mostly because a large proportion of gay men worked in the theatre. It could be used in the same way as Rhyming Cockney Slang, to hold a conversation without other people understanding, but some of the most outwardly gay people would use it to stand up for who they were. Polari fell into decline after the popular radio show Round the Horne, which had characters that spoke Polari, stopped it being a “private” language. Furthermore, homosexual acts were legalised in England and Wales in 1967, making it even more redundant. Polari is even more Latin-based than English is, with words like “vada” (“look at”) or “bona nochy” (“good night” – from the Italian “buona notte”). Words given to everyday English include “naff” (dull), “filly” (a young girl or woman) or “bod” (as in body).

Idioms

Creating phrases that don’t mean what they should mean is a hallmark of English. English idioms can utterly baffle new speakers, although they are slightly old-fashioned. They have a massive variety of different origins – including hunting (a “red herring” was used to lure foxes away from hunting grounds), sport (“back to square one” is from football radio shows, where player locations were given as grid squares and square one was the centre of the pitch) and medieval times (“if someone had “gone to the dogs”, they were so desperate that they would try to get food from the dogs which ate scraps from the dining table). You may also be familiar with idioms such as “battleaxe” - named after a journal published by an American women’s rights movement – or a “spaghetti” western; so-called because the film was made in an Italian studio.

These languages are comparatively short-lived strains of English, but modern English has lasted hundreds of years. Today’s slang incorporates Jamaican patois, and new words spread quickly via social media, so it looks like the next step for English. Where will our language take us next?