Thieves Cant Even

To make a version of Thieves Cant that I could speak with my players, I used Polari--the “secret gay language” that was used in England before homosexuality was decriminalized--and some of the same techniques that Polari drew upon to create words: I stole from other European languages and hacked and shortened words. I also modified some Polari words to “conjugate” them or make them sound better in context.

The greatest advantage to this version of Thieves Cant is that players and DMs can speak it aloud in front of other players and they won't understand. It sounds sort of like English and others may gain clues from context but it also sounds like gibberish.