Re: Caste Languages

On Thu, 14 Nov 2002 13:24:40 +0000 Jan van Steenbergen eskribyó:

<<<Not exactly to create it. But your question immediately reminds me of a
story
my girlfriend told me yesterday. She had been in the train, sitting next to
two
Polish men. Their conversation was a typical example of the worst kind of
street Polish you can imagine (and believe me: Polish can be really bad in
this
kind of things). Basically, every sentence contains the word "kurwa" (whore)
at
least two or three times, and many verbs are substituted with some version
of
the word "f*ck". Apparently they were unaware of the fact that someone else
in
the train could actually understand Polish.
This kind of slang can easily be comparated to the caste language you asked
about.>>>

The same is true for Russian and Ukrainian.
There is even a joke about CIA agent studying Russian, where the professor
tells him: "All right, Smith. Your Russian is perfect! But don't forget to
use the indefinite article 'blja' (=whore) as often as it's possible."

<<<FWIW, I have never applied the idea in any of my conlangs, but you never
know...>>>

The idea is worth considering...

> Jan
a Su serbitzyo,
Yitzik
~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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