Bona Parle!

Apr 26

Discover how Polari became a vital tool for the LGBTQ+ community to communicate safely during times of severe repression. This fascinating language, with its blend of cultural and multilingual influences, remains a symbol of queer resilience and resistance.

By Devon McCole

In 1533, King Henry VIII introduced an act which asserted that an intimate act between men was illegal. The penalty was death.

Centuries later, the discriminatory act remained enshrined in law, and while it was adapted over the years, homosexuality wasn’t decriminalised in England and Wales until the 1960s. It took until the 1980s for Scotland to follow suit.

From the 1920s to the 1960s, when same sex relationships were still illegal – and long before the government issued its long awaited apology to the public for ruining the lives of countless gay men and women – many hid behind a secret coded language: Polari.

Polari was born out of need – to escape persecution in unsafe spaces. The linguistic origins tell us a lot about the resilience of people on the fringes of society who rebelled, finding a way to protect themselves and others from the risk of being blackmailed, fired from their jobs, publicly shamed or imprisoned.

According to Paul Baker, author of Fabulosa! The Story of Polari, Britain’s Secret Gay Language, Polari exists on a spectrum. At one end were people who knew only some Polari words, often using it in conversation as playful slang. At the other end were those with a wider vocabulary whose conversation included more Polari than English, and who made up words in Polari as the need arose.

Not everyone who spoke Polari was queer, and not every queer person knew how to speak Polari. Polari was also quite common among travelling entertainers, criminals and others who moved in the margins.

Polari borrows words or phrases from other languages, reflecting the diverse linguistic environment in which it developed and creating a lexicon that was flexible and could be understood by a wide range of people.

These influences include Italian, French, cockney rhyming slang, and back slang (saying a word as if it’s spelt backwards). Interestingly, while many people claim there is a link between Romany and Polari, leading expert Paul Baker told us he wasn't able to find much connection: “When you start to compare the lexicons of Polari and Romany, there isn’t very much overlap (around 10 words)... I suspect that the linked words are more likely due to shared influences from a third source, like cockney or slang used in circuses."

Polari is rarely spoken today but recordings can be found online; it was famously spoken on Round the Horne, a 1960s comedy show, by two characters,Julian and Sandy (played by Hugh Paddick and Kenneth Williams). Their conversations, thick with innuendo, were humorous but also reflected the kind of coded language that was used by the LGBTQ+ people to express themselves safely.

As time passed and societal attitudes evolved, so did the use of Polari, which began to fade as more rights were won and the need for secrecy diminished. But its legacy lives on, serving as a testament to the ingenuity and resilience of those who fought for their right to love and express themselves freely.

Many of the words have become part of mainstream slang today. And it remains a powerful symbol of queer history, a reminder of the challenges faced by the LGBTQ+ community (and others), and testament to the lengths to which they went to carve out a space for themselves in an often hostile world.