(no subject)

[gothwalk]

Quick links here to something that came up in a conversation at work - the language of the Irish Travellers, variously called the Cant, the Gammon, Shelta, or Pavee. This was spoken to some degree in my hometown of Bunclody, too, as evidenced by the second link below.

Shelta
Sally Connors speaks the Gammon

Comments

[bheansidhe.livejournal.com]

Really! I've never heard that (which is not to say it isn't true). There's a Shelta Cave in Arkansas, and Shelta is an old-fashioned woman's name there.

Here's notes on how English is pronounced in Arkansas.

I grew up in Louisiana, which is the state immediately below Arkansas (between Arkansas and the Gulf of Mexico). In Louisiana, of course, the main secondary language is Cajun French. It's incomprehensible to modern French people, as it's based on an 18th century form of the language mixed with local Indian, Spanish, and African words, and it grew in linguistic isolation for 300 years. MOst Cajuns didn't speak any English at all until the 1940s. Today there's a big Francophone revival and they're trying to save the language from dying out, much like Gaelic and Welsh.

[bardiphouka.livejournal.com]

Apparently(doing a bit of digging) it was generally in the Ft Smith area and has disappeared to a large part, leaving mostly a tonne of people named Riley and O'Riley in the area.
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