What's New
A short, easy-to-keep-up page for bulletins.
Any questions or comments? Please e-mail them to: Travellers' Rest
A little (very little) humor:
"Doctor, I always feel like I'm being made the goat."
"How long have you been feeling like this?"
"Ever since I was a kid"
The only thing worse than when it's raining cats and dogs is when it comes to hailing taxis.
(:>D)
Reflections:
A new link has been added to the Traveller page, called "Reflections." It is a series of short reminiscences, mostly about the Travellers 50 years ago. Try it out.
The Cant:
I am going to take my best shot at reproducing the Shelta spoken in the old days; strip out any modern Cant from that list to preserve its "secrecy," and post the rest. Hopefully that final list will contain most of the words that we've lost; although the pronunciation is going to be "by guess and by golly." At the same time, those that you would rather not see written down here won't be. We can keep them to ourselves and all make believe that that there isn't a list of most of them in print already.
Now what you all do with those current Cant and the new/old words, Shelta, is not my problem. I'd like to hope, though, that some among you will find a few of the Shelta entries useful, or at least interesting, and will add one or two at a time to The Cant. It would be nice to see the old language grow for a change, instead of shrink.
It might take me a couple of weeks; it might take a month. So if you want to get your opinion on record before then, e-mail me with it. I can't promise that I'll print all of them, but they won't be ignored and the gist of your comments, at least, will be fairly presented here.
There is a new page linked to the Traveller/Shelta page, a pronunciation and phonetic spelling guide to be used in the creation of my forthcoming list of Shelta words.
Progress on this lexicon can be tracked by selecting "Travellers" and then "Shelta" to get to the right page; or just click on the following: Shelta
(The lexicon is now about half completed on 12/30/98.)
I find, contrary to my intentions stated on the Shelta page, that I am accepting words for that collection that might be Gammon or even Romany, as long as they might have been reasonably expected to be in our ancestors' vocabularies. It's just too tempting to do so rather than remain a purist. Ah well! Lots of other human endeavors proceed to that same result; so why not this? In this case: What was good enough for my great-grandfather. . . .
Incidentally: "Grandfather" was gaater tom and "grandmother" was nadjram tom (or sometimes karb) in Shelta. I suppose that gaater tom tom would have sounded a bit odd to the American ear, to say "great-grandfather."
Inquiry:
I received an e-mail from a gentleman named Stephen Haines yesterday (12/29/98). His "From:"
address purports to be Texas; although, for some reason or another, the posting time indicates an Eastern Standard
Time source. He described himself as a musker and asked no questions
nor provided any information beyond that. The only use of that expression among the Travellers I have ever heard
of was to mean a "policeman," a Romany loan word used at least 125 years ago (yes, I'm that old!). But
I'm not familiar with its use today (or him). Anybody have a clue? Could it be Romanichal, or English Traveller?
Coming Attractions:
A few more Shelta words from Old Times in the Old Country, of course.
There will be a new joke, if a good one comes my way.
By the way, any poetry on these pages that is not attributed to another person was written by myself and is copyrighted as such.
Any questions or comments? Please e-mail them to: Travellers' Rest
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