An exploration of the secret language of
carnival workers, past to present

 

 

 

I decided to put up this web page in hopes of finding more information on this subject, and sharing what information I possess. My grandparents travelled with a carnival in the 1930's. When I was a teenager, they taught me the secret language that carnies used back then to communicate in front of the customers without being understood by them. I used it to talk with my girlfriends when we didn't want to be overheard; we even "improved" it a little, making it more complicated. Now that my grandparents have both passed away, I am looking for other resources on this fascinating phenomenon.

The version of "Carny" I was taught is this: you insert the sound "earz" before the first vowel sound of a word. This would make "carnival" for instance sound like "cearzarnival". My friends and I would insert "earz" before every vowel sound in a word, so that "carnival" would become "cearzarnearzivearzal". It's important to remember that this is based on how the word is pronounced, not on the letters themselves - for instance, although there are two vowels together in the word "bread", they make only one vowel sound, therefore the carny for it is "brearzead".

From what I've been able to find, this language, called Carny or Carnival Talk my grandparents, is also called Carney, Carnese, Cizarny or Goon Talk. The sounds used vary, from my familiar "earz" to "eaz", "eeiz", "eeaz", "ez" and "az". It is apparently very similar to something called Double Dutch that came out of Harlem, though I can't tell if one directly influenced the other. It then spread to wrestling lingo, and most recently to rap (see Snoop Dogg's "izzle" speak). When I was younger, I also heard of languages called "Ob" and "Arc" which would insert those respective sounds into words in place of "earz". I have no idea where those came from.

If you have any more information you'd like to share about Carny and related topics, please email me.

LINKS

My home page