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Shelta (ˈʃɛltə; Irish: Seiltis) is a language spoken by Mincéirí (Irish Travellers), particularly in Ireland and the United Kingdom. It is widely known as the Cant, to its native speakers in Ireland as De Gammon, and to the linguistic community as Shelta. The exact number of native speakers is hard to determine due to sociolinguistic issues but Ethnologue puts the number of speakers at 30,000 in the UK, 6,000 in Ireland, and 50,000 in the US. The figure for at least the UK is dated to 1990; it is not clear if the other figures are from the same source. Linguistically Shelta is today seen as a mixed language that stems from a community of travelling people in Ireland that was originally predominantly Irish-speaking. The community later went through a period of widespread bilingualism that resulted in a language based heavily on Hiberno-English with heavy influences from Irish. As different varieties of Shelta display different degrees of anglicisation, it is hard to determine the extent of the Irish substratum. The Oxford Companion to the English Language puts it at 2,000–3,000 words. The language is known by various names. People outside the Irish Traveller community often refer to it as (the) Cant, the etymology of which is a matter of debate. Speakers of the language refer to it as (the) Cant, Gammon or Tarri. Amongst linguists, the name Shelta is the most commonly used term. Variants of the above names and additional names include Bog Latin, Gammon, Sheldru, Shelter, Shelteroch, the Ould Thing, and Tinker's Cant. The word Shelta appears 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 siúl ʃuːlj "to walk" is at the root, either via a term such as siúltóir ˈʃuːl̪ɣt̪ɣoːɾj "a walker" or a form of the verbal noun siúladh (cf. an lucht siúlta ənɣ ˌl̪ɣʊxt̪ɣ ˈʃuːl̪ɣt̪ɣə, "the walking people" (lit.

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Related concepts (9)

Shelta

Irish people

Irish people (Muintir na hÉireann or Na hÉireannaigh) are an ethnic group and nation native to the island of Ireland, who share a common history and culture. There have been humans in Ireland for about 33,000 years, and it has been continually inhabited for more than 10,000 years (see Prehistoric Ireland). For most of Ireland's recorded history, the Irish have been primarily a Gaelic people (see Gaelic Ireland). From the 9th century, small numbers of Vikings settled in Ireland, becoming the Norse-Gaels.

Irish language

Irish (Standard Irish: Gaeilge), also known as Gaelic 'geilIk, is a Goidelic language of the Insular Celtic branch of the Celtic language family, which is a part of the Indo-European language family. Irish is indigenous to the island of Ireland and was the population's first language until the 19th century, when English gradually became dominant, particularly in the last decades of the century. Today, Irish is still commonly spoken as a first language in areas of Ireland collectively known as the Gaeltacht, in which only 2% of Ireland's population lived in 2016.