oa De belangstelling voor het Bargoens

‘Bargoens’ is a Dutch sociolect of ambulatory marginal groups, which in the presence of outsiders is also spoken as a secret language. The mysterious group language has for five centuries enjoyed non–insiders. The external interest is proven by the use of the ‘Bargoens’ in literary texts (since the beginning of the sixteenth century), as well as by dozens of publications on ‘Bargoens’ from the end of the nineteenth century onwards. During the last decades, besides collections of words, also descriptions have appeared, such as monographic publications on local variants and on divergent aspects of the ‘Bargoens’. This article largely deals with the pre–scientific interest for the ‘Bargoens’ as it reveals itself by publications on this secret group language. So this is a summary history of the science of Bargoens in the making, as well as a survey of the literature in and on the ‘Bargoens’. This article aims at a literary survey as complete as possible. References are made to some two hundred titles.