Etymological Misconceptions About the ‘Gay Accent’

Adam Aleksic, a self-described etymology nerd, who previously gave several examples of hyperforeignisms, explained the linguistic misconceptions of the “gay accent” or “gay voice”.

First of all there is no one gay accent because the queer community is not a monolith. Second the gay male lisp is not actually a lisp which would involve misarticulating their s’s. They actually over pronounce their s’s along with many other consonants. …gay men also tend to speak in a breathier voice and have a wider pitch…Third, it’s not just an imitation of women’s speech which I’ve heard many people say.

Aleksic also explains the necessity of these verbal cues throughout history and around the world and cites specific historical examples.

…what’s really interesting to me is why they speak this way because it comes out of their history as a marginalized community. the gay accent fundamentally functions as metalinguistic signaling as a way for queer people to find each other when it might not be socially acceptable to be open about it.

There were specific languages developed to not only signal to one another but to avoid persecution, legal and otherwise. In 19th Century England gay circus performers spoke Polari and in the 20th Century Philippines, Swardspeak was spoken.

In 19th century England gay circus performers needed a way to hide from undercover policemen so they developed an entire slang system called Polari to secretly signal to each other. The same thing happened in the Philippines where gay men developed a slang dialect called Swardspeak which involves a special kind of code switching between English and Tagalog. And if you really look, some kind of gay accent has emerged in every country in every culture, which is linguistically very, cool but socially kind of sad that it’s always necessary