Shelta

The language is known by various names. People outside the Irish Traveller community often refer to it as Cant (language)|[the] Cant, the etymology of which is a matter of debate. Sheldru, Etymology The word Shelta appeared in print for the first time in 1882, in the book The Gypsies by the "gypsiologist" Charles Leland, who claimed to have discovered it as the "fifth Celtic tongue". The word's etymology has long been a matter of debate. Modern Celticists believe that Irish "to walk" is at the root, either via a term such as 'a walker' or a form of the verbal noun ; thus, , 'the walking people', lit. 'the people of walks', is the traditional Irish term for Travellers. ==Origins and history==

Linguists have been documenting Shelta since at least the 1870s. The first works were published in 1880 and 1882 by Charles Leland. In the earliest but undocumented period, linguists surmise that the Traveller community was Irish-speaking until a period of widespread bilingualism in Irish and Hiberno-English, and Scots language in Scotland set in, leading to creolisation (possibly with a trilingual stage). The resulting language is referred to as Old Shelta, and it is suspected that this stage of the language displayed distinctive features, such as non-English syntactic and morphological features, no longer found in Shelta. Within the diaspora, various sub-branches of Shelta exist. Shelta in England is increasingly undergoing anglicisation. American Irish-Traveller's Cant, originally synonymous with Shelta, has by now been almost fully anglicised. ==Linguistic features==

Sociologist Sharon Gmelch describes the Irish Travellers' language as follows: Thus, by design, it is not mutually intelligible with either English or Irish. Shelta is a secret language. Travellers do not like to share the language with outsiders, named , or non-travellers. When speaking Shelta in front of Buffers, Travellers will disguise the structure so as to make it seem like they aren't speaking Shelta at all. Lexicon While Shelta is influenced by English grammar, it is a mixture of Irish words as well. The word order is altered, syllables are reversed, and many of the original words are Irish that have been altered or reversed. Many Shelta words have been disguised using techniques such as back slang, where sounds are transposed. For example, 'kiss' from Irish , or the addition of sounds, for example 'father' from Irish . Grammar Shelta shares its main syntactic features with Hiberno-English and the majority of its morphological features such as -s plurals and past tense markers. Phonology Shelta has 27 consonants and 6 phonemic vowels. Many words are complex by incorporating numerous consonants within, as in the word for 'tree, bush' with the consonant being a hissing sound that is held in the back of the throat, and is held longer than other consonants. ==Loanwords==

Some Shelta words have been borrowed by mainstream English speakers, such as the word "bloke" meaning 'a man' in the mid-19th century. ==Orthography==

There is no standard orthography. Broadly speaking, Shelta can either be written following an Irish-type orthography or an English-type orthography. For example, the word for 'married' can either be spelled or ; the word for 'woman' can either be spelled or . ==Comparison texts==

Below are reproductions of the ''Lord's Prayer'' in Shelta as it occurred a century ago, current Shelta Cant, and modern English and Irish versions for comparison. The 19th-century Shelta version shows a high Shelta lexical content while the later Cant version shows a much lower Shelta lexical content. Both versions are adapted from Hancock who notes that the Cant reproduction is not exactly representative of actual speech in normal situations. ==See also==