In 1979 as a queer teenage boy (chicken, twinkie, filiomi) in San Francisco, I appreciated the knowledge of my elders, many of whom were from the far reaches of Queerdom. Hearing first hand stories of Stonewall only 10 years after, all the laws and ways around them is where I began to understand the importance of Polari. It wasn't just camp talk, it was a necesssary survival tactic that had to evolve faster than the police could decipher it. Losing most of my friends over the next 10 years just as I was getting to know them still sticks with me, as does everything they shared. P.S. Thank you for using the term Queer, it's so much easier than reciting the alphabet

Thank you for making queer history visible. We have always been everywhere. We are normal. 💜🏳️‍🌈

Didn't expect Swardspeak (known colloquially as: Gay Lingo/ Bekimon/ Bekinese/ Bekispluk) to be here honestly, I don't know why 😭, but I'm glad they included it And she's not kidding about Swardspeak needing complex cultural knowledge cuz the words feels like an inside joke most of the time. And the fact that it borrows words from like 5 languages makes it even more complex 💀💀

One of the main features of queer speech in Hebrew is to use second-person feminine for masculine people (על הנש, literally "on the fem"). This practice is believed to have originated in gay men calling each other on the phone, so it would sound like they're talking to a girlfriend rather than being affectionate towards a guy.

Honestly subculture language and how it shows up in mainstream culture language is interesting. Like how Game Over literally started as a poorly translated end screen in a video game and then as video games grew in popularity more games used it to the point where it became main stream use for, "This situation is over in a bad way."

This really helps me feel better when being trans has been so hard lately. Thanks for keeping the history alive

It's difficult for English speakers to grasp just how fascinating swardspeak can be. It's VERY playful and often double-entendre, to the point that even just speaking it can be entertaining to listeners AND the one speaking it. It relies on quick wit to understand what the other person is trying to say. It's also highly fluid, new words are continually added, and swardspeak today is very different from swardspeak in the 70s. And yes, it's almost incomprehensible to an outsider. The Philippines is historically one of the most accepting cultures when it comes to LGBT identities due to the historical importance of feminized men as shamans in the pre-colonial era. As a result, swardspeak words have a tendency to become mainstream. The swardspeak word for "boyfriend/girlfriend", for example, has entered standard Filipno TWICE. Once in the 80s to early 90s As "siyota", and again in the late 90s as "jowa". Both replaced the now formal-sounding "sinta"/"kasintahan".

Has anyone else noticed how Dr. B painted her nails lavender for a video about Lavender languages? One of the best Easter Eggs I've seen in a while❤

"is it possible to sound gay?" Matteo Lane: "yes. and in different languages. Even click tribes are like, " gurl!" 😄

An honorable mention to Brazilian queer argot Pajubá, which fuses vocabulary from Portuguese and West African languages (like Yoruba, Kikongo and Fon, for example), as LGBTQ+ people and Afro-Brazilian religions members got along as marginalized groups in Brazil. Thx 4 another sickening video, Otherwords! U werk! 🌈🧑‍🏫

Oh, so many little things I want to say. The whole lavender as the reference is defaulting to the male. Lesbians, though we use these terms too, we have our own terms too. The funny part is in the queer community, putting the feminine as the default is defaulting male. We're a fun community that way. I'm a butch lesbian so I tend to get masculine terms as reference. I'm the guy friend, I'm the king, or boi if I were cute. But the finny moment was when I said my male cat was being a drama queen and a friend said he's not a queen he's a boy and I'm like, that's just the term. If he were a girl she'd be a drama king, if she was especially dainty, then a queen or princess. But seriously, thanks for doing this. It's nice to be seen.

when I clicked this I was like “please talk about beki” (filipino gay lingo) because it’s so extensive and you did not disappoint! keribels!

Even in terminally online, heavily anglo-centric spaces on places like reddit or tumblr, trans people have come up with slang terms to better express an idea or be able to talk about trans things in public

Terrific episode about a very important topic. I loved the point you made at the end about the most-researched lavender languages being mostly used and developed by cis gay men - it makes me wonder about lesbian lavender languages, and other possible less-studied queer community languages.

Yes and….. one extra distinction not made in this video , is the huge influence the Queer African-American community has had on white queer and non-queer people/ now media. The American, Black queer experience has given us so much.

When I was a teenager in my late teenage years ! I recall finding this documentary on Polari ! As a bisexual teen soon to be a woman as I was 19 at the time ! I was oddly mesmerized by the fact that it was a code! But a bit sad because in a ideally nobody would have to hide their truth ! Still it’s a fundamental part of history in the LGBT+ ⚧️ 🏳️‍🌈 🏳️‍⚧️ community! So I’m that notion I also feel like it’s a crucial part of LGBT + history, that we must preserve

Lavender language is a lovely phrase

I LOVE this!!!! And I was waiting for you to bring up Swardspeak, or as it's locally known, beki. I didn't know about other Lavender Languages, but I remember thinking how similar it was to Cockney rhyming slang. FUN FACT because of prominent LGBTQ+ figures in TV "pang-masa" (for the masses; local channels watched by millions of Pinoys) your average Filipino knows a lot of queer slang even if they're not queer. My straight best friend knows way more beki than I do, I'm still trying to learn :'D Some of my favourite Beki phrases include: "Ganda ka?" - literally "are you beautiful?" it's an ironic compliment, sort of like "oh you must think you're amazing huh?" "Alicia Keys" - sounds like "alis" which means to leave; Let’s go "Keribells" - similar to "carry on"; used as OK, cool; Gorabels = let's go "Baboosh" "Itech" "Anetch" - bye, ito (this), ano (what?) "Churva" - a filler word, roughly meaning "stuff"; when you forget a word for something you say "churva" There's lots more but I don't speak it as well as my friends do ;3;

Super cool video! I'm a little suprised there wasn't a mention of "are you a friend of Dorothy," but that's pretty universally known. Happy Pride everyone!⚧🏳‍🌈🏳‍⚧

Swardspeak is also called Bekimon. And a lot of these words have become so common that even straight people can understand whole paragraphs composed of entirely swardspeak words.

I love thé fact that Swardspeak has Pop Culture Deep Cuts. That’s our jam 😂

Interesting. This reminds of an encounter I had 20 years ago, back when I was still working as a bank teller. Me: Okay, I'll have your transaction done in a second. Anything else? Guy (Staring at me): Are you part of The Family? Me: Huh? Guy: Are you part of _The Family?_ Me: ...Like the Mafia? Guy: **Sigh** Never mind. I didn't realize what he was asking until years later. And yeah, I was part of The Family.

In Brazil we have "Pajubá", that mixes Portuguese, Tupi and Yorubá languages with slurs to avoid recognition of the countent of the message.

I’m currently working on a project to archive the local argot here in Beirut, Lebanon, and this video has given me so much motivation!

Back in the late 90s, when I was in college in Puerto Rico, the way we found each other was by our coded language. If you thought someone might be gay, you’d throw a few c words here and there in your conversation. If the other person was also gay, they’d make a reference to “soy familia” (“I’m family”), and that was it. LOL Our communities have helped protect each other in myriad ways, language is just one more tool we have to help and protect each other. Thanks for doing this.

So "swardspeak" is "meta" or references to a multitude of many other things that alludes to another meaning or a double entendre. It's like an inside joke within an inside joke.

i like how “antibiotic” was cited here 😆 didn’t know that that existed as a swardspeak word but it definitely makes sense

In Brazil we have it too. It’s called Pajubá and is mostly used by travestís (a Brazilian trans identity).

Some trans lingo for you: egg (someone who hasn’t figured out that they’re trans yet), feminems (estradiol pills), T (testosterone), clock (to recognize someone as trans), deadname (someone’s former name before transitioning), enby (nonbinary), the dolls (trans women collectively)

You talked about straight people being able to understand some "gay lingo" and it made me think, from what I see in the US lavender language as you said started in the ballroom scene, then drag queens popularize it, then gay people repeat it, and eventually straight people start saying it because they hear us saying it, so it really does seep into everyday language.

One of my favorite swardspeak words is "yuvmademestronger" which means lesbian, which comes from Tomboy > yobmot > yobmotch > yuvmotch > yuvmae > yuvmademestronger 😂

Me and my Dad (may he rest in peace) have been working on a comic series where one of the main intentions of it is to provide a safe place for minority people to enter whenever they want, and one of the methods we plan on doing that is by having a well informed understanding and usage of what we're writing, and consider this added to that plan. =)

There's a hidden language argot in a Doctor Who episode from 1970, where a 'showman' recognises the third Doctor as another 'showman' and tries 'the palare', which the Doctor does not understand, even though all languages are translated for him due to the link with the TARDIS, his time machine. But then Doctor 3 Jon Pertwee (Perthuis) was a sailor in earlier life and knew several argots connected with British servicemen, the Royal Navy and actors, which venn-diagram nicely onto other argots like Polari. My father was a soldier in WWII (and HIS father was a 'showman' in the transport and support parts of travelling circuses). His command of military argots (usually based upon Hindi, Arabic and Mahratta words but some are untraceable, and some are limited to one regiment only), and his exposure to how the British Army segregated gay soldiers into the bandsmen (who were also the stretcher bearers) or the mortar platoon taught him a lot about slang, let's say.

She-ing is my absolute favorite just for how it throws people off. I was trying to explain it to my cousin once, and the poor girl was so confused. She was like "you use she/her? should i have been using them for you?"

In South Asia, we have Hijra Farsi, most prominently used by the trans community, this lavender language isn’t much documented as it changes it form with the multiple local languages that surround it.

*Thank you* for highlighting all the other lavender languages outside of Polari. And I love the switch from "their" to "our" at the end. Happy pride, Dr. B

In my native language, Indonesian, I frequently found words like "eyke" (I or me) and "yey" (you), which are most likely taken from Dutch, used by queer community in the country. Even though I'm not really sure if it is true in real life since I mostly heard them from TV. It is fascinating to find out that it also exists in other languages too!

"Is it possible to sound gay?" me, a Known Gay: yes, absolutely

Question: why would someone speaking Swardspeak need a code for rain? Do these languages develop codes for ordinary, non-threatening things as a way to overwhelm the non-fluent listener? For instance, if all the unusual words I speak only deal with taboo subjects like drugs or sex, would that maybe give the game away a bit? And so I code ordinary things too, like rain, in order to make guessing the taboo words more difficult? Or is it because rain itself has taboo connotations that aren’t obvious at face value? Or is there some more organic, and less thought out reason?

An excellent video for Pride Month. I love how queer culture is so deep and universal.

It's so awesome to keep learning more and more each episode. Never stop being amazed at how people are amazing in what they can create and cultivate!

As a queer and trans second generation Filipino American, learning about Swardspeak made me so giddy oh my god. I know there's tension between Filipinos of the motherland and Filipinos of the diaspora like myself in terms of how different our cultures are, but the fact that we're all from the same roots always gives me a sense of pride, especially for someone like myself (a child of immigrants living in the US as Asian hate incidents continue to grow).

I've heard that "trade" came from Polari. Apparently it was common for closeted upper-class men in London to trade money or gifts for the companionship and secrecy of other men. I personally learned the term trade in the context the black gay community in the US where it's used to describe a certain kind of man. He's a fit, masc, straight passing man who has sex with men. These days, mainly because of Rupaul's Drag Race IMO, the term gets used in a very loose way to describe pretty much anyone someone finds attractive lol.

I wish y’all had the funding to do deep dives into subjects; every country probably has some form of lavender language and it would be interesting to learn about some with less visibility than Polari or Ballroom. edited for typos

in turkey we (i mean lgbtiqa+ folks) use Lubunca. (lubunya means something like queer) so it can be named "queerish" when u translate to english. The history of Lubunca goes back in history and the reason for its emergence is based on the safe communication between sex worker trans women. its a lot like Polari.

As Filipino, I kinda expect gaylingo to be in this video given how wonderful it is and people in LGBTQ+ here are very common and mostly accepted. Here's a very common gaylingo that even common Filipino uses, particularly millennials and gen z's. "daks" means huge pp "dyutay /jutay/" means small pp P.S. LGBTQ Filipinos are the best people existing. They're the very definition of "social glue." Also, yes, I sound gay.

4:42 yup, quite common to hear kalurkey here in the Philippines said by gays. Some words like “keri” (i.e. can you carry/handle this?) and “i-push mo yan” (go for it) seem to be sort of in the realm of everyday lingo.

Fun fact: "Naff" reportedly started out as an acronym, NAFF, meaning so nasty (or painfully straight) that the individual in question was "Not Available For F___ing." Reminds me of one of my favourite exchanges from "Are you Being Served," where the store was mandated to be more "hip": Captain Peacock: Wilberforce? Mr. Humprhies: Yes, Stephen? Captain Peacock: Strides for the omi with the naff riah. [EDIT]: My thanks to the commenter who corrected me on the final line, but whose comment seems to have vanished, since.]

Philippine Gay Lingo Words I know. Visayan: Shudi abash et Shudi from the word dili/di meaning "Do not" with a prefix "Shu" (I think it is the Shhhhh Sound). Abash - reverse spelling of saba meaning noisy. et - reverse spelling of te/ate meaning big sister. Shudi abash et = do not talk about it or don't be noisy. Tagalog: Charot - meaning "Just Kidding" from the visayan word char. Maoy - meaning a drunkard with an uncontrolable emotion (dancing happily, throwing things angily, fighting people) from the visayan word maoy meaning sad. Dorobo - a thief, from japanese word. Okane - money, also from japanese. And there's a lot more..

I use to be so ashamed of my voice I wouldn’t even speak aloud. I’m glad I get to learn about this

I've literally watched Yas Queen go from secret lingo to something straight people say to each other. It actually kind of passes some people off in the community linking ti appropriation. Likewise many words used prejoratively have been reappointed by the community and are used casually in some circles almost like racial slurs in music but it rubs some members the wrong way to hear other members of the community use it (not going to write any for fear of being banned for hate speech but use your imagination)

It's interesting cause trans people in the US in my experience tend to speak to each other in a way that almost ices out a cishet person. Our spaces online have very "in-crowd" vibe, that if failed it's "gtfo". There's tests within the language to smoke out trolls and vet cishet people to see if they're allied. It's actually quite subtle that I think a linguist could explain the nuances of. I wish that it extended to irl more, because there tends to be an insular and disparate tightly closed cliques. That can be frustrating interpersonally and even for protective collectivism- currently more individualist in many respects. Fun thing people should know, we borrowed a term from Star Trek with our "gender prime directive" where we don't crack eggs before they're ready to hatch- meaning we don't convince a closeted trans person or a person that seems closeted they're trans. Bad form to try to tell someone who they are, and we know a person has to come to the conclusion themselves. They ask questions, we'll answer usually with personal anecdotes. The discourse about us says we "groom" people to become trans, it couldn't be farther form the truth.

Fortunately quite a bit of British lavender language is recorded, as it got used quite freely on a radio series called 'Around the Horne' decades ago. Look up the 'Julian and Sandy' skits. Most Brits who study comedy know quite a bit of palare / Polari thanks to this. 'Homie' or 'omie' for man, 'eek' for face, 'bona' for good.

love this topic, i feel like how interconnected the world has become bc of the internet that community specific language is harder to keep within specific groups which can jeopardize safety. secret lexicons Shouldnt be necessary but they are with the society we live in, im curious if languages are just inevitable to spread beyond their intended groups or if the continuous innovation by the in groups keeps the language safe still (both can be true of course).

Dr. B is fabulous. I could listen to her all day long.

I taught some students about argots about a year ago in the GSA club - nice to see them also spoken about here too!

Happy Pride!! This just shows how language is flexible and shows how different communities can communicate with one another!

I have a Filipino friend who speaks Gay Lingo, And sometimes he'll give literal translations of some phrases and it's wacky as heck lol, I love it.

Thank you for featuring Swardspeak I love it! The language evolves every day.

The Oscar Wild play, “The Importance of Being Ernest” was written almost completely in coded Polari language. It was a hit with main stream society, but those who understood the coded language laughed on a whole other level.

Discovered Otherwords recently and been on a binge, you are so much fun to listen to! I'd listen to you narrate anything

My favorite series on this channel, honestly. Love it.

because i grew up with a LOT of queer family members, i literally used swardspeak on a regular basis as a child, up until i moved to a different country! phone calls from neighbors, messing around with friends, and family gatherings had conversations peppered with lavender language lmao. and she really wasnt kidding when she said that it was hard to understand if you werent used to speaking it because a solid 90% of the slang terms are either inside jokes from the 50’s, pop culture phenomena that no one really remembers but everyone uses it anyway, or loanwords. 💀

Darmok and Jalad on the ocean; Sokath, his eyes uncovered.

One of my favorite phrases is "Friend of Dorothy." IIRC, it was basically a way for gay americans to ask if the person they were speaking to was also gay. It was a reference to the characters from Wizard of Oz who some interpreted to be gay due to them lacking traditional traits ascribed to straight men in fiction at the time. Then, when the US government was strongly against having LGBTQ+ in the military, navy, and so on, they had undercover individuals who would go to bars and try to phish for gay people. They kept hearing "Are you a friend of Dorothy?" And took it literally, spending millions of dollars, and putting out a bounty for any information on this Dorothy that all the gays knew some how. Very funny.

She calls it swardspeak, but it's locally better known as "bekinese" or "bekimon."

Is polari inspired by the cockney accent and rhyming scheme? ex. "going out for britneys" = "going out for beers" Britney SPEARS rhyming with BEERS

As a queer person who doesn't use Lavender Language often, it's nice to hear about the concept of 'sounding queer' without just being noticed for the stereotype of a high-pitched, flamboyant younger man.

as a queer peruvian this is my first time hearing about loxoro, this was a very interesting video and now i feel like looking up about the speech more

I love the tiny detail that Dr. Brozovsky has lavender-colored nails in the video where she talks about lavender language.

Filipinos typically refer to Swardspeak as Beki. It has some interesting features of how they twist the vocabulary from the vernacular languages back and forth between English and Tagalog, that are wholly separate from Taglish. Like, "kalurkey" which was briefly featured in the video is derived from "kaloka", which in Tagalog means something that could drive you nuts/insane. Adding the Er sound and the eY sound are features of English injected into a Tagalog word. Swardspeak also borrows heavily from English, like "jubis" is just obese with a Jin front of it, and it's a word that they use to mean fat. It takes the O sound and the long E sound from English and turns it into short U and I sounds that are available in the Tagalog language. Because LGBTQ folks are culturally open in some industries and most areas of Metro Manila, a lot of straight folks learn some phrases or words pretty quickly. Some of my favorites are these examples of cultural context. Like, there is a journalist named Ces Drilon, so we say we're feeling Stress Drilon. Or there's an actor named Gardo Versoza. So we say we're already Haggardo Versoza at the end of a workday. She-ing is also extremely common now in Metro Manila, especially among office workers. It's common to call your friends endearingly as "mamsh" (short for mumshy), "mhie" (like -my at the end of the word Mommy), sis/ses for sister. And these days we even say it with friends who are straight males. And they say it back. I can't tell anymore if this had its roots in gay and trans communities, but I make the safe bet that they originated the trend. It's usually the case.

In Brazil we have Pajubá as our queer dialect

I just learned about the word straggot a few days ago and though i don't really have any contextual reasons to use it, I get a massive kick out of its existence.

Another awesome episode! Thank you so much, The Aids tragedy cost us so much as a species and now I will add a language to that cost.

I appreciate you talking about this topic, especially as an educational channel 🧡

Props for the pride month representation ❤

I had no idea zhuzh was borrowed from Polari ! I yelled "thats awesome!!" lol. As others have said, thank you for making queer history more visible and easily accessible!

I love all the videos you make! its so fun and entertaining, lots to learn too!

in south asia, most prominently north india and Pakistan, the historical Hijra/ khwaja sira communities also have a language called Hijra Farsi/Gupti. It also follows some rules of reversing syllables.

I knew about Polari from Kenneth Williams using it extensively on his BBC Radio comedy, but hadn't heard of all these other lavender languages. Wow.

Lavender language, what a delightfully gentle sounding phrase. Much better than the definition of purple prose. And it is specifically halfway between pink and light blue. I love how clever people can be with words.😊

Commenting just for the engagement. Love the videos! Keep it up!

Such an important topic to cover! Thank you

This is super interesting, thank you! Some of this I’ve noticed in my own speech but wasn’t sure precisely where I picked it up. I had no idea of the existence of some of these!

Asexuals have their own words too. “Allosexuals” meaning sexually attracted people. “Cake” we use to detect other asexuals “I prefer just eating cake” Etc.

Nice lavender nails to go with the video :)

Hi 👋 I'm Dr.Gaurang queer in India. We have very old and rich queer argot language. We is call riwala or kothi riwala or kothi language. It is also a language for queer secret communication. It's believed that it's use become more popular in homophobic Islamic rule where the language borrowed the word from tribal tongues. The language became a real thing in British Raj (colonial era) after independence the language had also borrowed some words from English. What makes this language unique is in India there are 28 official languages the riwala used in the state is influenced by the words from the languages of neighbouring states but not that state language. Though theses languages vary region to region there is a consistency of base vocabulary so everyone queer across the India who knows riwala can understand other. I'm concerned about loosing this language as it is a valuable part of queer culture in India and gen z queers like me prefer English over riwala. The research in this field is limited as India still remains a conservative country. Can we as a international community participate in research and revive the language of rainbow.

It seems like one aspect of "sounding gay" is missing from the analysis: everything regarding diction, inflection, melody, tone, etc. I'm pretty sure it has been studied somewhat. However, I guess it's harder to pin down and way less conscious.

This was absolutely fascinating! Thank you so much. ❤

Granted, this excellent video was for an English/Indo-European speaking audience, but it would have been great to include other language families which often correspond to different views on homosexuality. Here in Israel, LGBT slang is similar to Polari -- comprised of the dominant language Hebrew, plus minority languages like Arabic and Ladino -- yet more rapidly assimilated into mainstream society. The smash hit "Tel Aviv" by Omer Adam was originally a promo song for an LGBT circuit party of Jews of Middle Eastern background in 2013, and is full of lavender language; now, it's a hit heard at straight weddings and sung by people of all ages and identities.

This series continues to produce bangers. Keep up the wonderful work, y'all!

Beautifully done. Lavender is a wonderful language

I don't know how I feel about hearing straight white men or straight men in general using shade, tea and other such words that used to be part of our own secret language of sorts for more than 70 years.

Nalingaw kos "Antibiotic"! hahahahaha. I really love how alive Swardspeak is here in the Philippines and how most of the words are based on the speakers creativity and improvisation.

i love learning about language, especially if it applies to my community. great video

In Brazil there’s a dictionary of words created by queer people,funny bc even straight ppl nowdays use those words

swardspeak = da most difficult language to decode. 😂😋 THANK YOU fo diz episode, dr. erica and otherwords team. ❣️💟💗💖💕💓💝

I learned so much! Thank you.

One aspect of queer lingo that is more controversial but I enjoy it (maybe because I'm Gen Z) is turning slurs on their head to refer to cis or hetero people, as well as using slurs as terms of endearment for our community (such as queer).

Swardspeak is so fascinating! I'm a queer Pil-AM, but much of my gay Titos were immigrants to the US. I'm sure my Tito's swardspeak is outdated, just like how US based dialects tend to sound different from the countries it originated from. Now I'm wondering if my sapphic/lesbians have a more specific language, then I'm aware of outside of our own terms. I feel I'm much more familiar with queer geek culture, which I feel like has its own lingo.