Shelta

The language is known by various names. People outside the Irish Traveller community often refer to it as [the] Cant, the etymology of which is a matter of debate. Speakers of the language refer to it as [the] Cant, {{lang|sth|[de] Gammon}} or {{lang|sth|Tarri}}. Amongst linguists, the name Shelta is the most commonly used term.

Variants of the above names and additional names include Bog Latin, Gammon,{{cite book |editor-last=Dolan |editor-first=Terence Patrick |title=A Dictionary of Hiberno-English |date=2004 |publisher=Gill & MacMillan |isbn=0-7171-3535-7}} Sheldru, Shelter, Shelteroch, the Ould Thing, Tinker's Cant, and Shelta Thari.{{cite magazine |title=Leland on the Gypsies |date=September 1882 |magazine=The Atlantic |page=417 |url= https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1882/09/leland-on-the-gypsies/633024/}} Select "View This Story as a PDF" to bypass the partial pay-wall.

The word Shelta appeared in print for the first time in 1882, in the book The Gypsies by the "gypsiologist" Charles Leland, who claimed to have discovered it as the "fifth Celtic tongue". The word's etymology has long been a matter of debate. Modern Celticists believe that Irish {{lang|ga|siúl}} {{IPA|ga|ʃuːlʲ|}} "to walk" is at the root, either via a term such as {{lang|ga|siúltóir}} {{IPA|ga|ˈʃuːl̪ˠt̪ˠoːɾʲ|}} 'a walker' or a form of the verbal noun {{lang|ga|siúladh}}, cf. {{lang|ga|an lucht siúlta}} {{IPA|ga|ənˠ ˌl̪ˠʊxt̪ˠ ˈʃuːl̪ˠt̪ˠə|}}, 'the walking people', lit. 'the people of walks',{{cite book |title=Collins Irish Dictionary |publisher=HarperCollins |date=2006}} the traditional Irish term for Travellers.

The Dictionary of Hiberno-English cites it as possibly a corruption of the word Celt. Since Shelta is a mixture of English and Irish grammar, the etymology is not straightforward. The language is made up mostly of Irish lexicon, being classified as a grammar-lexicon language with the grammar being English-based.{{harvp|Velupillai|2015|p=381}}

Linguists have been documenting Shelta since at least the 1870s. The first works were published in 1880 and 1882 by Charles Leland. Celticist Kuno Meyer and Romani expert John Sampson both assert that Shelta existed as far back as the 13th century.{{cite journal |last=Meyer |first=Kuno |author-link=Kuno Meyer |date=1909 |title=The secret languages of Ireland |journal=Journal of the Gypsy Lore Society |series=New Series |volume=2 |pages=241–246}}

In the earliest but undocumented period, linguists surmise that the Traveller community was Irish-speaking until a period of widespread bilingualism in Irish and Hiberno-English, and Scots language in Scotland set in, leading to creolisation (possibly with a trilingual stage). The resulting language is referred to as Old Shelta, and it is suspected that this stage of the language displayed distinctive features, such as non-English syntactic and morphological features, no longer found in Shelta.

Within the diaspora, various sub-branches of Shelta exist. Shelta in England is increasingly undergoing anglicisation. American Irish-Traveller's Cant, originally synonymous with Shelta, has by now been almost fully anglicised.

Sociologist Sharon Gmelch describes the Irish Travellers' language as follows:{{Cite book |last=Gmelch |first=Sharon |title=Nan: The Life of an Irish Travelling Woman |date=1986 |publisher=Souvenir Press |location=London |isbn=0-285-62785-6 |page=234}}

{{blockquote|Irish Travellers use a secret argot or cant known as Gammon. It is used primarily to conceal meaning from outsiders, especially during business transactions and in the presence of police. Most Gammon utterances are terse and spoken so quickly that a non-Traveler might conclude the words merely had been garbled. Most Gammon words were formed from Irish by applying four techniques: reversal, metathesis, affixing, and substitution. In the first, an Irish word is reversed to form a Gammon one – {{lang|ga|mac}}, or 'son', in Irish became {{lang|sth|kam}} in Gammon. In the second, consonants or consonant clusters were transposed. Thirdly, a sound or cluster of sounds were either prefixed or suffixed to an Irish word. Some of the more frequently prefixed sounds were s, gr, and g. For example, {{lang|ga|obair}}, 'work or job', became {{lang|sth|gruber}} in Gammon. Lastly, many Gammon words were formed by substituting an arbitrary consonant or consonant cluster in an Irish word. In recent years, modern slang and Romani (the language of the gypsies) words have been incorporated. The grammar and syntax are English. The first vocabulary collected from Irish Travellers was published in 1808, indicating that Gammon dates at least back to the 1700s. But many early Celtic scholars who studied it, including Kuno Meyer, concluded it was much older.}}

Thus, by design, it is not mutually intelligible with either English or Irish.

Shelta is a secret language.{{harvp|Velupillai|2015|p=80}} Travellers do not like to share the language with outsiders, named {{lang|sth|Buffers}}, or non-travellers.{{harvp|Velupillai|2015|p=80}} When speaking Shelta in front of Buffers, Travellers will disguise the structure so as to make it seem like they aren't speaking Shelta at all.{{harvp|Velupillai|2015|p=80}}

While Shelta is influenced by English grammar, it is a mixture of Irish words as well. The word order is altered, syllables are reversed, and many of the original words are Irish that have been altered or reversed. Many Shelta words have been disguised using techniques such as back slang, where sounds are transposed. For example, {{lang|sth|gop}} 'kiss' from Irish {{lang|ga|póg}}, or the addition of sounds, for example {{lang|sth|gather}} 'father' from Irish {{lang|ga|athair}}. Other examples include {{lang|sth|lackín}} or {{lang|sth|lakeen}} 'girl' from Irish {{lang|ga|cailín}}, and the word {{lang|sth|rodas}} 'door' from Irish {{lang|ga|doras}}.{{Cite journal |last1=Harper |first1=Jared |last2=Hudson |first2=Charles |date=1971 |title=Irish Traveler Cant |journal=Journal of English Linguistics |volume=5 |pages=80 |doi=10.1177/007542427100500105 |s2cid=144672161}}

Shelta shares its main syntactic features with Hiberno-English and the majority of its morphological features such as -s plurals and past tense markers. Compare:

There is not as much importance put on gender in Shelta as in Irish. Plurals are shown with the English suffix /-s/ or /-i/, such as {{lang|sth|gloꭕ}} for 'man' becomes {{lang|sth|gloꭕi}} for 'men'.{{harvp|Velupillai|2015|p=382}}

Shelta has 27 consonants and 6 phonemic vowels.

Many words are complex by incorporating numerous consonants within, as in the word {{lang|sth|skraꭕo}} for 'tree, bush' with the consonant /ꭕ/ being a hissing sound that is held in the back of the throat, and is held longer than other consonants.

The vowel system features phonemic lengthening for all vowels except for /{{IPAlink|ə}}/. Additionally, [ey, iy, ow, uw] can be realized as diphthongs in certain varieties of Shelta. {{Cite journal |last1=Aceto |first1=Michael |last2=Bakker |first2=Peter |last3=Mous |first3=Maarten |date=December 1995 |title=Mixed Languages: 15 Case Studies in Language Intertwining |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/415772 |journal=Language |volume=71 |issue=4 |pages=842 |doi=10.2307/415772|jstor=415772 |url-access=subscription }}

Some Shelta words have been borrowed by mainstream English speakers, such as the word "bloke" meaning 'a man' in the mid-19th century.Oxford Dictionary – etymology{{full citation needed|date=December 2023|reason=It's not even clear which of the many Oxford dictionaries this is referring to, in what editon, at what page or entry. One presumes a "bloke" entry in one of them.}}

There is no standard orthography. Broadly speaking, Shelta can either be written following an Irish-type orthography or an English-type orthography. For example, the word for 'married' can either be spelled {{lang|sth|lósped}} or {{lang|sth|lohsped}}; the word for 'woman' can either be spelled {{lang|sth|beoir}} or {{lang|sth|byohr}}.

Below are reproductions of the Lord's Prayer in Shelta as it occurred a century ago{{when|date=December 2023}}, current Shelta Cant, and modern English and Irish versions for comparison. The 19th-century Shelta version shows a high Shelta lexical content while the later Cant version shows a much lower Shelta lexical content. Both versions are adapted from Hancock{{Cite journal |doi=10.2307/454664 |last=Hancock |first=I. |date=1986 |title=The cryptolectal speech of the American roads: Traveller Cant and American Angloromani |journal=American Speech |volume=61 |issue=3 |pages=207–208 |publisher=Duke University Press |jstor=454664}} who notes that the Cant reproduction is not exactly representative of actual speech in normal situations.

• Beurla Reagaird
• Bungi dialect
• Polari
• Scottish Cant

{{Reflist}}

• {{cite book |author-link=R. A. Stewart Macalister |first=R. A. Stewart |last=Macalister |date=1937 |title=The Secret Languages of Ireland: with special reference to the origin and nature of the Shelta language |publisher=Cambridge University Press |url= https://archive.org/details/the-secret-languages-of-ireland_202307 |via=Internet Archive}} Also reissued by Armagh: Craobh Rua Books (1997).
• {{Cite book |last=Velupillai |first=Viveka |title=Pidgins, Creoles and Mixed Languages: An Introduction |publisher=John Benjamins |date=2015 |isbn=978-90-272-5271-5 |location=Amsterdam}}

• [https://web.archive.org/web/20140920033126/http://www.travellersrest.org/sheltanocant990418.htm Shelta lexicon and pronunciation guide]

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Category:Cant languages

Category:English-based argots

Category:English-based pidgins and creoles

Category:Irish dialects

Category:Macaronic forms of English

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