The Language of Carney
On my About page on this website, I mention that I’m pretty terrible at French but I am fluent in Carney. When recently interviewed for a podcast with Cindy Heath she asked me what in the heck the language of Carney is. You might be wondering also.
Carney is the language that carnival workers use to speak to each other. At least it used to be. I’m not sure how prevalent it is anymore. By talking to each other in this way they could say all kinds of things about potential marks, customers, and suckers and offer this information without anyone knowing what they were saying.
It’s similar to Pig Latin, in that it transforms your regular language with a certain pattern of extra syllables. Don’t ask me to explain it to you precisely, because I learned it intuitively. Carney is most definitely not a written language, but I’ll do my best to write out a sentence so you can get the gist of it.
Ezi ezam cizo hezapizy thezat yezou ezare rezedezing thezis blezog pezost. You might have guessed (it’s easier when written out than when hearing it) that I just wrote: I am so happy that you are reading this blog post.
One of my sisters and several of my closest childhood friends have spoken this language to each other for years. It was very handy when our kids were little and we could talk about adult topics without them understanding! Alas, most of them have picked it up at least enough that we can’t get anything over on them anymore. And now my ten-year-old grandson can speak it better and faster than any of us. I can still get him confused if I speak really fast, though.
Oh, almost forgot to tell you how I learned it. Years ago (many, many years ago) when I was in high school I vastly preferred to hang out in the park adjacent to my school and smoke cigarettes and other substances than actually attend class. The park was a gathering place for all manner of ne’er-do-wells and one of them—or maybe it was several of them, I’ve forgotten—happened along and taught us Carney, having worked at a carnival recently. It’s an easy language to pick up, even when you’re stoned, apparently.
It’s difficult to find much information on Carney, which is a shame, because I feel like it’s a genuinely American folk language and I’d love to learn more. Here are a few links that I’ve located:
Wikipedia article on Carney, which mentions it is also sometimes called carnival cant.
Here’s a short clip of a man speaking a bit of Carney, though I will say he doesn’t use it for all the words in a sentence as we do and I think it loses some of its magic this way.
Long clip with lots of irrelevant talking but still some good info.
Let me know if these links work—Squarespace does them in a manner different than what I’m used to, so I’m not sure!
That’s all I’ve got for now. Maybe when I get more schooled on how to work this blog, I’ll upload a clip of me speaking Carney. In the meantime, ceze yezou lezatezer!