The Mean Streets of English

             

English ... is a thief language. We steal verbs and nouns from other languages.... It's terrible. There's this great saying about English lurking in alleyways, knocking out other languages and rifling their pockets for spare vocabulary. 

                                  from The Untold Tale (The Accidental Turn Series Book 1) by J.M. Frey

            Isn't that a delicious tidbit? The character who is speaking says she can't remember where she found that definition. Maybe Frey made it up? I went hunting for it, without success, but discovered something else: a Wikipedia entry for "thieves cant" that suggests all kinds of other things.

            Thieves' or rogues' cant, according to the discussion, was also known as "Peddler's French." English, the language that rifles through other languages to extend itself, was used by actual thieves for their own secret language, reshaping meanings to serve the purpose of the subculture.

            This idea would be more compelling if the same sort of thing weren't also known to exist in a South German and a Swiss equivalent, and elsewhere, I found a reference to a Russian version, too.

  Gran Canaria village street....

            Then, lo and behold, I found a web site titled "Thieves Guild" [http://www.thievesguild.cc/thieves-cant] which has a whole page dedicated to the English thieves' cant; you can even study it in simple form!  The site (which looks like a Dungeons and Dragons spin-off) says you can learn an advanced form, too, but you'll need a high level thieves' guild official to teach you.

            I love the concept of English as a thief language. (I've described it to English learners as a language that "borrows" but we don't give the bits and pieces back, do we? No. They've been appropriated, with or without permission.) It skulks in shadows, alert, ready to pounce... As to the "rules" of English, they're more like guidelines, with all their exceptions and options--as is proper somehow in a den of thievery, don't you think?

            It does beg the question, however: if language and culture go hand in hand, one shaping the other as they make their way through time, what might we make of the concept of English as a thief language in the context of the cultures of English speaking peoples?