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Kaliarda (Καλιαρντά / [kaʎardá]) is the variety that Greek transsexuals and homosexuals (especially gay men) developed during the 1940s and it is used until today.

Examples of Kaliarda use

  • Individual Kaliarda words
  • Kaliarda expressions
  • Kaliarda-Greek code-mixing

Research goal:

To provide an ethnographic analysis of the speech community of Kaliarda

Kaliarda is a linguistic variety that is socially transmitted, along with the socially acquired knowledge it accompanies (values and taboos for example).

Petropoulos, E. (2010). 2nd ed. Καλιαρντά [Kaliarda]. Athens, Greece: Nefeli.

Kavoukopoulos, F. (1990). Presentation de l'argot des homosexuels grecs a partir du dictionnaire de Elias Petropoulos Kaliarda [Presentation of the argot of Greek homosexuals from Elias Petropoulos’ dictionary]. Centre d'Argotologie-Documents de Travail, 10:124-130.

Montoliu, C. (2005). Is Kaliarda, Greek Gay Slang, a mixed gypsy language?. Erytheia: Revista de Estudios Bizantinos y Neogriegos. 26: 299-318.

The variety emerged

because of the need

of Greek gay men to

have a code to

communicate with

one another without

being understood by

the hostile, anti-gay,

and homophobic

environment in Greece

after World War II.

(Petropoulos, 2010)

Kaliarda is a marked linguistic variety. People who use it communicate a message, apart from the one communicated by the actual words they use; they make a statement about their sexual identity.

As idioms, their meaning derives from the combination of the words forming an expression and not from the individual words themselves; the meaning of each expression is something more than the mere combination of the meanings of the individual words composing the expression.

/kokóri/

A speech community:

- is a group of people engaged in regular and frequent interaction, who

- share at least one communicative system,

- share norms and patters of language use,

- share norms for interpreting language, and

- have identifiable boundaries between themselves and others (self vs. other).

- It may also include individuals who are members of other speech communities, too, as, typically, individuals are members of more than one speech community.

(Gumperz, 1971; Hymes, 1972; Brown & Levinson, 1979; Wardhaugh, 2008)

/tsόli/

Reference Forms

3 months

9 participants

5 women, 3 men, 1 transsexual

24 - 32 years & 59 years old

In some cases a word used in Kaliarda already exists as a word in Greek, but it has a totally different meaning.

In some other cases there are two totally different words, one in Kaliarda and one in Greek, for the same thing.

/nάkα/

/lάgα/

/nεrό/

/όxi/

/αnάsεnε/ /tοn/ /bόbo/

The Kaliarda words that are still used nowadays do not have the rich etymological content that the large linguistic variety possesses, as discussed by Petropoulos (2010), because a very small portion of the Kaliarda lexicon has survived until today.

breathe.IMP.2.SG.

DEF.MASC.ACC.SG.

(meaning not provided)

Feminine suffixes are mainly used for gay men.

/lύgrα/ = very mean, vicious, and nasty

/αdεrfί/ = sister

/ksεfonimέni/ = a woman for whom a lot of voices - gossip - are heard”, or “a woman who is very loud”.

/krαgmέni/ = the person who provokes negative comments about her

/sikiά/ = fig tree

/κulί/ = someone who is missing one or two hands (literal translation), weird, obscure, odd, out of the normal, crazy, unexpected, sudden, random, irrelevant, silly, paradoxical, surreal, or whimsical (metaphorical translation)

/kαliαrdί/ = ugly, mean, weird

/(krifo)binέs/ = “krifo” means “secret”, “bines” comes from the Turkish word “ibne” (weird, odd, bizarre, and in modern Turkish queer)

"Give me a blow job."

Who speaks Kaliarda nowadays?

/ k α ʎ i α r d ά /

/tα/ /but/ /bεrdέ/ /plirόsαmε/

DEF.NEUT.NOM.PL.

a lot

pay.1.PL.PAST.

money

/bαkrolαtsέftrα/

"We paid a lot of money."

Kaliarda words are a combination of

English, Italian, French, and Turkish

words with Greek suffixes.

"The new generation, today, does not use Kaliarda, except for some words. I would be very pleased if this language came back, because it reminds me of my youth."

(Paolo)

Further Research

More interviewees, more observed interactions between the members of the Kaliarda speech community, and the addition of a longitudinal perspective to trace developments in the variety are needed to be able to study Kaliarda and the speech community in more depth.

Data Collection:

- interviews (structured & scheduled, 30Q)

- observation (not structured & not scheduled,

real time data)

RECOGNIZE:

- the members form a speech community

- they have developed and are participants of a culture of their own.

/bαkrά/ = hair

/lαtsέvo/ = I like something, I am fond of something

Speech Communities of:

A - Greeks

B - Greek LGBTQ

C - Kaliarda

/pάο/ /nα/ /bisέlo/

go.1.SG.PRES.

to

sleep.1.SG.PRES.

Kaliarda functions as

a marker of speech

community identity and

membership and fosters

co-membership and

camaraderie.

"I'm going to sleep."

The general tendency of the vocabulary of Kaliarda focuses on sexual subjects because Kaliarda was created to hide the sexual identity of the people who used it.

Kaliarda follows the Greek

grammatical and syntactic

structure (SVO).

/bεrdόtsolo/

Kaliarda is not considered

a secret language anymore,

because over time people learned

this dialect through theater

and television.

"They named the language Kaliarda for emphasis; because it [homosexuality] was seen by others as a bad thing."

(Paolo)

fuck.2.SG.IMPER.

AUX.2.SG.IMPER.

get fucked.2.SG.IMPER.

The name of the sociolect comes from the adjective

/kαʎiαrdόs/, /kαʎiαrdί/,

/kαʎiαrdό/, which - in Kaliarda - means "ugly", "mean", or "weird".

/bεrdέ/ = money

/tsόli/ = beautiful

young man

/άvεlε/ /kurάvεlε/ /kurαvεloάvεlε/

/its/ /kε/ /nάkα/

"It's true. Kaliarda is used in the television and in the theater, and in the movies. Everywhere. Anywhere. Even the lady in the kiosk of my neighborhood speaks Kaliarda."

(Blacky)

"The main reasons [Kaliarda is used] are insecurity and fearfulness. The person next to you should not listen [i.e. understand] what you'll say."

(Sultan)

no

and

(meaning not proviced)

Thank you!

galini.gkartzonika@gmail.com

"Fuck and get fucked, otherwise we're lost."

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