Verlan

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Verlan is an argot in the French language, featuring inversion of syllables in a word, and is common in slang and youth language. It rests on a long French tradition of transposing syllables of individual words to create slang words.[citation needed] The name verlan itself is an example: it is derived from inverting the syllables in l'envers ("the inverse," pronounced lan-ver).

Contents

[edit] General characteristics and Structure

[edit] Word Formation

Words in verlan are formed by switching the order in which syllables from the original word are pronounced. For example, français [fʀã se] becomes cèfran [se fʀã].

Verlan generally retains the pronunciation of the original syllables. In particular, French words that end in a silent e (a schwa, eu, such as femme) and words which end in a pronounced consonant and which usually have an e muet added at the end (such as flic) retain the sound of the e muet in verlan. In addition, verlan often drops the final vowel sound after the word is inverted, so femme and flic become meuf and keuf, respectively.

Different rules apply when dealing with one-syllable words, and words with more than one syllable may be verlanised in more than one way. For example, cigarette may yield either retsiga or garetsi.[1]

[edit] Vocabulary

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In certain dialects of verlan, certain words are often inverted and certain words are not. Words such as très remain unchanged in most dialects, while femme is usually inverted.

Some verlan words, such as meuf, have become so commonplace that they have been included into the Petit Larousse[citation needed] and a doubly "verlanised" version was rendered necessary, and the singly verlanised meuf became feumeu; similarly, the verlan word beur, derived from arabe, has become accepted into popular culture such that it has been re-verlanised to yield rebeu.[1][2]

Some verlan words, which are now well incorporated in common French language have taken on their own significance, or at least certain connotations that have changed their meaning.[3] For example, the word meuf which can still be used to refer to any woman, also refers to the speaker's girlfriend, when used in the possessive form (ma meuf -> my girlfriend), while the original word femme, would refer to the speaker's wife when used in the same way (ma femme -> my wife). Such words retain a cultural significance from the time at which they appeared in common language. The word beur was widely spread in the second half of the 20th century and therefore generally refers to first generation immigrants from northern Africa in France. The re-verlanised word rebeu is much more recent, and therefore tends to be used to refer rather to second-generation Arab imigrants in France, and their social attitude. The word also carries a certain social stigma: an African immigrant who has a good social background will not be referred to with the word rebeu, while one will a lower social background will.[original research?]

In theory, any word can be translated into verlan but only a few expressions are actually used in everyday speech.[citation needed] Verbs translated into verlan cannot be conjugated easily. There is no such thing as a verlan grammar so most of the time verbs are used in the infinitive, past participle or progressive form. For example:

  • J'étais en train de pécho une bombe ("I was hitting on a hot chick") is said, but not je pécho[ais] or je p[ais]cho.

[edit] Spelling

As with many language games, the study of verlan suffers from the fact that it is primarily a spoken language passed down orally, and thus there exists no standardized spelling. While some still argue that the letters should be held over from the original word, in the case of verlan most experts agree that words should be spelled as to best approximate pronunciation, hence the use of verlan as opposed to versl'en.

[edit] Cultural significance

Verlan is not so much a language as a means of setting apart certain words.[4] The fact that many verlan words refer either to sex or drugs stems from its original purpose: to keep the communication secret from institutions of social control. Nobody would use solely verlan while talking. Usually, the use of verlan is limited to one or two key words per sentence. Verlan words and expressions would rather be mixed inside a more general argotique language.

One of the principal functions of verlan is for marking membership in, or exclusion from, the group that speaks it (generally young people in the cities and suburbs); it is a tool for marking and delineating group identity.[4] Speakers rarely create a verlan word on the fly; rather, their ability to use and understand words from an accepted set of known verlan terms allows them to be identified as part of a verlan-speaking group.

Some verlan words have gained mainstream currency. A notable example is the word beur (from arabe), now widely used to describe a French-born individual of North African descent. (It has since been verlanised a second time into rebeu, which also is now widely used.)

Verlan is popular as a form of expression in French hip-hop.[5] Artists claim that it fits well with the musical medium because "form ranks way over substance," although it must conform to experts' ideas of how hip-hop should sound.[6]

[edit] Examples

Persons
  • Femme (woman) → meuf → feumeu
  • Mec (guy) → keum/keumé
  • Flic (cop) → keufli → keuf → feuk (sounds similar to the English curse word)
  • Arabe (Arab) → beur → rebeu
  • Noir (Black person) → renoi ("keubla" from English "black" is also widely used)
  • Chinois (Chinese)→ noichi → noich
  • Fêteur (party person) → teufer
Adjectives
  • Bête (silly) → teubé
  • Louche (suspect, weird) → chelou
  • Cher (expensive) → reuch
  • Moche (ugly) → cheum/ cheumo
  • Enervé (angry)→ véner
Verbs
  • Choper (hit on a girl, buy drugs, or generally grab or obtain something) → pécho
  • Fumer (smoke) → méfu
  • Marcher (to walk/work) → chémar
  • Tomber (drop/forget about it) → béton (Laisse tomber ! → Laisse béton !)
Nouns
  • Métro (underground rail) → tromé or trom
  • Cigarette (cigarette) → garetsi → garo
  • Shit (slang for hashish) → teuchi or teuch
  • Herbe (weed) → beuher → beuh
  • Foot ( football or soccer) → teufoo or toof
  • Frère (brother) → reufrè → reuf

[edit] Other languages

 This section does not cite any references or sources. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (January 2009)

The use of coded languages like verlan is uncommon in English-speaking countries, but similar manners of speaking, such as Cockney rhyming slang, Pig Latin or "backslang," are used in English-speaking cultures (see Language game). A form of slang very similar to verlan is used in Greek, called "podaná", itself an inversed form of "anápoda" (i.e. backwards). Verlan is also very similar, if not identical, to the slang often used in Croatia, Bosnia, Serbia and Macedonia in the Serbo-Croat languages and Macedonian. This slang, "šatrovački" and sometimes labeled as the 8th case, is popular among the youth in especially Belgrade and Sarajevo. A recent trend of slang among the youth of Rio de Janeiro also resembles verlan.

[edit] See also

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ a b Valdman 2000, p. 1188.
  2. ^ Lefkowitz 1989, pp. 319–320.
  3. ^ Lefkowitz 1989, p. 320.
  4. ^ a b Valdman 2000, p. 1189.
  5. ^ Rosen, Jody (10 November 2005). "David Brooks, Playa Hater". Slate Magazine. http://www.slate.com/id/2130120. Retrieved on 21 March 2008. 
  6. ^ St. Alse, Yaka (21 January 2005). "Notes to 'Wardsback'". Open Brackets: Lost in Translation. http://openbrackets.com/article/640/wardsback. Retrieved on 21 March 2008. 

[edit] Bibliography

  • Lefkowitz, Natalie J (1989). "Verlan: talking backwards in French". The French Review 63 (2). 
  • Valdman, Albert (2000). "La Langue des faubourgs et des banlieues: de l'argot au français populaire". The French Review 73 (6).  (French)

[edit] External links

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verlan"
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