The once secret gay language, Polari, has a motley history. Outed by a pair of camp characters — Julian, played by Hugh Paddick, and Sandy, played by Kenneth Williams — in the hugely-popular 1960s BBC radio series, Round the Horne, it fell out of favour for a time since then, but is now making something of a comeback.

Kultur & Gesellschaft
Lingua Franca - Program podcast Folgen
Lingua Franca, presented by Maria Zijlstra, looks at all aspects of language: language old, modern, and even invented. Through interviews and prepared talks, the program features experts who analyse a single topic of interest to users and lovers of language. Examples of the sort of linguistic territory they traverse are: bi-lingual education, ebonics, the language of pornography, and the political use of words. Lingua Franca is published every Saturday.
Folgen von Lingua Franca - Program podcast
50 Folgen
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Folge vom 06.10.2012Speaking gay
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Folge vom 29.09.2012Back to the beginning, naturallyDescribed as a ‘mystical idiom’ said to be found universally in nature, the secret society of Rosicrucians elaborated an old idea of a primal language that was the language of nature itself, through which we could know the real world and our true selves.
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Folge vom 22.09.2012Indigenous song languageThe Indigenous songs of Australia are regarded as the crown jewels of Aboriginal oral cultures, being a melding of different forms of language – some archaic and some ghostly – as well as of melody, rhythm and myriad other performative elements.
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Folge vom 15.09.2012How writing beganWriting would have to be one of the greatest legacies of ancient Mesopotamia, where the earliest-known system of writing was invented some 5000 years ago. First formed out of, then written in the abundant alluvia of the river valleys, hear how archaeologists figured out just what brought this communication system into being.