Cant (language)
Encyclopedia
A Cant is the jargon
or argot
of a group, often implying its use to exclude or mislead people outside the group.
linguistics, the derivation is normally seen to be from the Scottish Gaelic chainnt or Irish
word caint (older spelling cainnt) "speech, talk". In this sense it is seen to have derived amongst the itinerant groups of people in Scotland
and Ireland
, hailing from both Irish/Scottish Gaelic and English speaking backgrounds ultimately leading to a creole language
.
The most widely known form is "the Cant", known to its native speakers in Ireland as Gammon and to the linguistic community as Shelta.
In the Scottish context, it has given rise to the terms Scottish Cant
(a variant of Scots
with Romani
and Scottish Gaelic influences) and the Highland Traveller's Cant (or Beurla Reagaird), a Gaelic-based cant.
cantāre "to sing" via Norman French canter.
Within this derivation, the history of the word is seen to originally have referred to the chanting of friars in a disparaging way some time between the 12th and 15th century, then the singsong of beggars and eventually a criminal jargon.
was a feature of popular pamphlets and plays particularly between 1590 and 1615, but continued to feature in literature through the 18th century. There are questions about how genuinely the literature reflected vernacular
use in the criminal underworld. A thief in 1839 claimed that the cant he had seen in print was nothing like the cant then used by gypsies, thieves and beggars. He also said that each of these used distinct vocabularies, which overlapped, the gypsies having a cant word for everything, and the beggars using a lower style than the thieves.
In June 2009 it was reported that inmates in one English prison were using "Elizabethan Cant" as a means of communication that guards would not understand, although the words used are not part of the canon of recognised cant.
The word has also been used as a suffix
to coin names for modern day jargons such as medicant, a term used to refer to the type of language employed by members of the medical profession that is largely unintelligible to lay people.
Jargon
Jargon is terminology which is especially defined in relationship to a specific activity, profession, group, or event. The philosophe Condillac observed in 1782 that "Every science requires a special language because every science has its own ideas." As a rationalist member of the Enlightenment he...
or argot
Argot
An Argot is a secret language used by various groups—including, but not limited to, thieves and other criminals—to prevent outsiders from understanding their conversations. The term argot is also used to refer to the informal specialized vocabulary from a particular field of study, hobby, job,...
of a group, often implying its use to exclude or mislead people outside the group.
Derivation in Celtic linguistics
In CelticGoidelic languages
The Goidelic languages or Gaelic languages are one of the two branches of the Insular Celtic languages, the other consisting of the Brythonic languages. Goidelic languages historically formed a dialect continuum stretching from the south of Ireland through the Isle of Man to the north of Scotland...
linguistics, the derivation is normally seen to be from the Scottish Gaelic chainnt or Irish
Irish language
Irish , also known as Irish Gaelic, is a Goidelic language of the Indo-European language family, originating in Ireland and historically spoken by the Irish people. Irish is now spoken as a first language by a minority of Irish people, as well as being a second language of a larger proportion of...
word caint (older spelling cainnt) "speech, talk". In this sense it is seen to have derived amongst the itinerant groups of people in Scotland
Scotland
Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...
and Ireland
Ireland
Ireland is an island to the northwest of continental Europe. It is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island on Earth...
, hailing from both Irish/Scottish Gaelic and English speaking backgrounds ultimately leading to a creole language
Creole language
A creole language, or simply a creole, is a stable natural language developed from the mixing of parent languages; creoles differ from pidgins in that they have been nativized by children as their primary language, making them have features of natural languages that are normally missing from...
.
The most widely known form is "the Cant", known to its native speakers in Ireland as Gammon and to the linguistic community as Shelta.
In the Scottish context, it has given rise to the terms Scottish Cant
Scottish Cant
Scottish Cant is a cant spoken in Scotland by Lowland Scottish Travellers/Gypsies.-Classification:A certain amount of Romani words have entered Lowland Scottish Cant through intermarriage with British Romani groups, between 25-35% of Scottish Cant originates in a Romani-derived lexicon...
(a variant of Scots
Scots language
Scots is the Germanic language variety spoken in Lowland Scotland and parts of Ulster . It is sometimes called Lowland Scots to distinguish it from Scottish Gaelic, the Celtic language variety spoken in most of the western Highlands and in the Hebrides.Since there are no universally accepted...
with Romani
Romani language
Romani or Romany, Gypsy or Gipsy is any of several languages of the Romani people. They are Indic, sometimes classified in the "Central" or "Northwestern" zone, and sometimes treated as a branch of their own....
and Scottish Gaelic influences) and the Highland Traveller's Cant (or Beurla Reagaird), a Gaelic-based cant.
Derivation outside Celtic linguistics
Outside Goidelic circles, the derivation is normally seen to be from LatinLatin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...
cantāre "to sing" via Norman French canter.
Within this derivation, the history of the word is seen to originally have referred to the chanting of friars in a disparaging way some time between the 12th and 15th century, then the singsong of beggars and eventually a criminal jargon.
Usage
The Thieves' CantThieves' cant
Thieves' cant or Rogues' cant was a secret language which was formerly used by thieves, beggars and hustlers of various kinds in Great Britain and to a lesser extent in other English-speaking countries...
was a feature of popular pamphlets and plays particularly between 1590 and 1615, but continued to feature in literature through the 18th century. There are questions about how genuinely the literature reflected vernacular
Vernacular
A vernacular is the native language or native dialect of a specific population, as opposed to a language of wider communication that is not native to the population, such as a national language or lingua franca.- Etymology :The term is not a recent one...
use in the criminal underworld. A thief in 1839 claimed that the cant he had seen in print was nothing like the cant then used by gypsies, thieves and beggars. He also said that each of these used distinct vocabularies, which overlapped, the gypsies having a cant word for everything, and the beggars using a lower style than the thieves.
In June 2009 it was reported that inmates in one English prison were using "Elizabethan Cant" as a means of communication that guards would not understand, although the words used are not part of the canon of recognised cant.
The word has also been used as a suffix
Suffix
In linguistics, a suffix is an affix which is placed after the stem of a word. Common examples are case endings, which indicate the grammatical case of nouns or adjectives, and verb endings, which form the conjugation of verbs...
to coin names for modern day jargons such as medicant, a term used to refer to the type of language employed by members of the medical profession that is largely unintelligible to lay people.
Examples of cants
- BanjačkiBanjackiBanjački is secret language of bricklayers from Podrinje region .The language was invented by brickworkers from Osat in eastern Bosnia and later spread to surrounding regions. Brickworkers are using when they want to hide something from their employers. Serbian author Dragan Panić classifies it as...
, from SerbiaSerbiaSerbia , officially the Republic of Serbia , is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeast Europe, covering the southern part of the Carpathian basin and the central part of the Balkans... - BaralleteBaralleteBarallete is a largely vanished argot which used to be employed by the traditional knife-sharpeners and umbrella-repairers of the Galician province of Ourense, in Spain....
, from Galicia, Spain - BargoensBargoensBargoens is a form of Dutch slang. More specifically, it is a cant language that arose in the 17th century, and was used by criminals, tramps and travelling salesmen as a secret code, like Spain's Germanía or French Argot....
, from the NetherlandsNetherlandsThe Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders... - Bron from LeónLeón, SpainLeón is the capital of the province of León in the autonomous community of Castile and León, situated in the northwest of Spain. Its city population of 136,985 makes it the largest municipality in the province, accounting for more than one quarter of the province's population...
and AsturiasAsturiasThe Principality of Asturias is an autonomous community of the Kingdom of Spain, coextensive with the former Kingdom of Asturias in the Middle Ages... - Beurla Reagaird a Gaelic based cant used by Highland Traveller community in ScotlandScotlandScotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...
, BritainUnited KingdomThe United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages... - Fala dos arxinasFala dos arxinasFala dos arxinas is the name of an argot employed by stonecutters in Galicia, Spain, particularly in the area of Pontevedra, based on galician language...
, from Galicia, Spain - FenyaFenyaFenya or fenka is a Russian cant language used among criminals. Originally it was a cryptolanguage of ofenyas or ofenes, old Russian peddlers, and had a number of names. There are no convincing explanations about the origins of the words "ofenya" and "fenya"...
from RussiaRussiaRussia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects... - GaceríaGaceríaGacería is the name of a slang or argot employed by the trilleros and the briqueros in the village of Cantalejo, in the Spanish province of Segovia...
, from SpainSpainSpain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula... - GermaníaGermaníaGermanía is the Spanish term for the argot used by criminals or in jails in Spain during 15th and 16th centuries. Its purpose is to keep outsiders out of the conversation...
, from Spain - GrypseraGrypseraGrypsera is a distinct non-standard dialect of the Polish language, used traditionally by recidivist prison inmates...
, from PolandPolandPoland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north... - Klezmer-loshnKlezmer-loshnKlezmer-loshn is an extinct derivative of the Yiddish language. It was a slang or argot used by travelling Jewish musicians, known as klezmorim , in Eastern Europe prior to the 20th century....
, from Eastern EuropeEastern EuropeEastern Europe is the eastern part of Europe. The term has widely disparate geopolitical, geographical, cultural and socioeconomic readings, which makes it highly context-dependent and even volatile, and there are "almost as many definitions of Eastern Europe as there are scholars of the region"... - LunfardoLunfardoLunfardo is a dialect originated and developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries in the lower classes in Buenos Aires and the surrounding Gran Buenos Aires, and from there spread to other cities nearby, such as Rosario and Montevideo, cities with similar socio-cultural situations...
, from Argentina and Uruguay - JavanaisJavanaisJavanais is an element of French slang where the extra syllable "av" is placed inside a word , between every consonant followed by a vowel, rendering it more incomprehensible...
, from FranceFranceThe French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France... - LouchébemLouchébemLouchébem or loucherbem is Parisian and Lyonnaise butchers' slang, similar to Pig Latin and Verlan. It originated in the mid-19th century. Each word is transformed by moving the first consonant to the end; and suffixes such as -ème, -ji, -oc, -muche are added at the end; the letter "L" is placed...
, from France - MeshterskiMeshterskiMeshterski or Meshtrenski was the cant, or secret sociolect, of the south Bulgarian builders, bricklayers and masons. The name comes from the word мещра meshtra, "master", from Latin magister...
, from Bulgaria - Padonkaffsky jargonPadonkaffsky jargonPadonkaffsky jargon or Olbanian language is a cant language developed by padonki of Runet. It started as an Internet slang language originally used in the Russian Internet community...
from RunetRunetCurrently Internet access in Russia is available to businesses and home users in various forms, including dial-up, cable, DSL, FTTH, mobile, wireless and satellite... - PolariPolariPolari is a form of cant slang used in Britain by actors, circus and fairground showmen, criminals, prostitutes, and by the gay subculture. It was popularised in the 1960s by camp characters Julian and Sandy in the popular BBC radio show Round the Horne...
from BritainUnited KingdomThe United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages... - RotwelschRotwelschRotwelsch or Gaunersprache is a secret language, a cant or thieves' argot, spoken by covert groups primarily in southern Germany and Switzerland.-Origin and development:...
, from GermanyGermanyGermany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate... - ŠatrovačkiŠatrovackiŠatrovački is a feature of permuting syllables of words used in Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian and Macedonian. It is similar to verlan and louchébem in French. The term is sometimes used to describe other slang in which words are deformed, as well.Šatrovački was initially developed by criminals in...
, from the former YugoslaviaYugoslaviaYugoslavia refers to three political entities that existed successively on the western part of the Balkans during most of the 20th century.... - Thieves' cantThieves' cantThieves' cant or Rogues' cant was a secret language which was formerly used by thieves, beggars and hustlers of various kinds in Great Britain and to a lesser extent in other English-speaking countries...
, from Britain - VerlanVerlanVerlan is an 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 individual words to create slang words...
, from France - XírigaXírigaXíriga is an occupation-related cant on Asturian developed by the tejeros of Llanes and Ribadesella in Asturias. The tejeros were migrant workers in brick or clay, usually poor, who contracted themselves out for work sometimes in distant towns...
, from Asturias - Scottish CantScottish CantScottish Cant is a cant spoken in Scotland by Lowland Scottish Travellers/Gypsies.-Classification:A certain amount of Romani words have entered Lowland Scottish Cant through intermarriage with British Romani groups, between 25-35% of Scottish Cant originates in a Romani-derived lexicon...
a variant of ScotsScots languageScots is the Germanic language variety spoken in Lowland Scotland and parts of Ulster . It is sometimes called Lowland Scots to distinguish it from Scottish Gaelic, the Celtic language variety spoken in most of the western Highlands and in the Hebrides.Since there are no universally accepted...
and RomaniRomani languageRomani or Romany, Gypsy or Gipsy is any of several languages of the Romani people. They are Indic, sometimes classified in the "Central" or "Northwestern" zone, and sometimes treated as a branch of their own....
used by the Lowland Gypsies in ScotlandScotlandScotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...
, BritainUnited KingdomThe United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages... - Shelta, from the Irish travellerIrish TravellerIrish Travellers are a traditionally nomadic people of ethnic Irish origin, who maintain a separate language and set of traditions. They live predominantly in the Republic of Ireland, the United Kingdom and the United States.-Etymology:...
community in IrelandIrelandIreland is an island to the northwest of continental Europe. It is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island on Earth...
See also
- ArgotArgotAn Argot is a secret language used by various groups—including, but not limited to, thieves and other criminals—to prevent outsiders from understanding their conversations. The term argot is also used to refer to the informal specialized vocabulary from a particular field of study, hobby, job,...
- Code talkerCode talkerCode talkers was a term used to describe people who talk using a coded language. It is frequently used to describe 400 Native American Marines who served in the United States Marine Corps whose primary job was the transmission of secret tactical messages...
- JargonJargonJargon is terminology which is especially defined in relationship to a specific activity, profession, group, or event. The philosophe Condillac observed in 1782 that "Every science requires a special language because every science has its own ideas." As a rationalist member of the Enlightenment he...
- LingoLingo, Chris Hernandez is an American Christian rap artist, producer, and label owner-Early years:Lingo was born to Richard and Carmen Hernandez in Dallas, TX. Born into a faith based and God fearing family, Lingo knew the Lord at a young age...
- PatoisPatoisPatois is any language that is considered nonstandard, although the term is not formally defined in linguistics. It can refer to pidgins, creoles, dialects, and other forms of native or local speech, but not commonly to jargon or slang, which are vocabulary-based forms of cant...
- SlangSlangSlang is the use of informal words and expressions that are not considered standard in the speaker's language or dialect but are considered more acceptable when used socially. Slang is often to be found in areas of the lexicon that refer to things considered taboo...
- Rhyming slang
- VernacularVernacularA vernacular is the native language or native dialect of a specific population, as opposed to a language of wider communication that is not native to the population, such as a national language or lingua franca.- Etymology :The term is not a recent one...