Most languages are dumb. French is dumb, Korean is dumb. German sucks. I hate Vietnamese. I hate Swahili, I like Spanish, but I hate Swedish. All different languages with their own unique histories. But some are more unique than others. For example, did you know there was once a secret language spoken only by criminals? It is called Thieves cant, and this is it’s story.
A Criminal Code
In the mid 1500s, rumor spread of a secret network of criminals stretching across Europe. It was said they operated in broad daylight, communicating with their own language, known as Thieves Cant. At that point in history, police forces were not widespread. Law enforcement was typically carried out by guards and watchmen in big cities, but in rural communities it was often just angry peasants.
Crime was rampant, so rampant that people hired a type of bounty hunter known as a thief-taker. The problem is, thief-takers would sometimes turn to crime, realizing they were the only ones So in the end, thief-takers had to be hired to go after other thief-takers. It was a real old lady who ate a fly situation. The point I’m making is, nobody really knew what was going on. This eventually birthed a genre of book known as Rogue Literature. Authors purported to tell the stories and confessions of real life criminals, going deep into the world of underground rogues. So for the first time, ordinary people got a look at the criminal mind.
Or so they thought. There were no fact checkers in the 16th century, and the public was pretty gullible. Remember that people were still being put on trial for being witches and werewolves – and I hate werewolves as much as anyone, but you get my point.
Thieves Cant
According to many books, there were large societies of thieves and murderers, highly secretive for obvious reason. In fact, they were so secretive they had their own form of communication. And a condition for joining one of such societies, was never to teach thieves cant to an outsider. Because of this, two rogues could plan a crime in broad daylight, and to an innocent bystander, it would sound like drunk gibberish. For example bulk a cull to the right – that’s an instruction to hit a victim on the right side of their chest, so that another can steal their purse. But only a crook would be alerted by such a phrase.
There were slight variations, with different societies apparently having their own slang terms. But generally speaking, all types of thieves Cant are mutually intelligible. So a crook could travel almost anywhere in the country and find a fellow criminal just by speaking it. Different nations in Europe had their own criminal Cants. In Russia it was known as Fen’ka – and in Spain it was Germania. One thing they all had in common was their relationship to Romany.
King of All Criminals
For many centuries, Romani gypsies have been seen as outsiders. A people of mysterious origin, nomadic in culture, they have always been misunderstood, and greatly distrusted. For a lot of people, they were pretty much synonymous with organized crime. So often they were just rounded up and sent to prison without trial. At one point the Spanish crown ordered the imprisonment of all gypsies in Spain. Because of this, thieves Cant was greatly influenced by the Romani language, which probably did not help their public image. But to be fair, it couldn’t get much worse. It’s a bit like how Italian gangs used to dominate crime in New York. Some even said all criminal societies in Europe were led by a single man – who also happened to be the king of all gypsies.
Nobody knows how old Thieves Cant is, or how deliberate it’s creation was – I don’t even known why I’m making this video, because let’s face it, none of this matters. As it featured in popular books, words from Thieves Cant gradually bled into common usage. For example, the term fence, referring to people who buy stolen goods. And because Rogue literature was so popular, a lot of readers actually wanted to learn Thieves Cant as if it were a language that actually mattered. Primers and dictionaries in Thieves Cant became best sellers, and well into the 1800s people were obsessed with learning it.
Beyond Thieves Cant
Secret languages have always been a source of fascination, and Thieves Cant is just one example. Another is Nushu, the language only spoken by women. Developed at a time when women were banned from receiving education, it was primarily a written script. Only a select few women were taught to read it, and most writing was destroyed to avoid it being discovered. Because of this, few historical texts remain, but knowledge of the language were passed down for centuries. And only going into the 20th century did it start to die.
Another example of a secret language is Kallawaya, today spoken by less than 100 people. This is because it is only taught to those wishing to become traditional healers – so very few people born into the Kallawaya community end up learning it. But let’s be honest, Thieves Cant makes those 2 look very boring.