35.1196, Fun Fact: Verlan

[The LINGUIST List]

LINGUIST List: Vol-35-1196. Thu Apr 11 2024. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 35.1196, Fun Fact: Verlan

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Date: 12-Apr-2024
From: Justin Fuller [justin at linguistlist.org]
Subject: Fun Fact: Verlan


Today's Fun Fact was contributed by Corentin Mazet.

Verlan is a famous French mirror language game found mostly in
European Frenches. It originated in the 1970s in and around Paris and
then spread to other cities in France, but traces of language games
like Verlan have been recorded as early as the 12th century (!) in
French texts. Some of the words have become so common that speakers
might not realize that they were originally Verlan words, but new
words are still regularly created.

Like most language games and slangs, Verlan is closely tied to
specific communities. It takes root in the lower socio-economic class
of the French banlieues and is linked to the multicultural identities
of local youths. As a language game, it is cryptic; part of its appeal
is communicating within communities without being understood by
outsiders, as well as signaling membership to a group. When Verlan
words become too mainstream, they tend to stop being used by the
community and are quickly replaced by new ones. Verlan speakers have
strong intuitions on which Verlan words are acceptable or not, and
using this slang when one is not part of the community comes with
risks of a pragmatic faux-pas!

Verlan is based on segment and syllable inversions, and mostly focuses
on pronunciation rather than spelling. For monosyllabic words,
segments are usually inverted: fou [fu] ‘crazy’ becomes ouf [uf] in
Verlan. When several syllables are available, they are inverted, as in
zarbi [zaʁbi] from the base word bizarre [bizaʁ] ‘bizarre, weird’. Fun
fact, the word Verlan [vɛʁlɑ̃] itself is also in Verlan! It comes from
l’envers [lɑ̃vɛʁ], which means ‘the reverse, the other side’.

All three examples above were fairly straight forward, but we find
more complicated examples. The word rigolo [ʁiɡolo] ‘funny’ has three
syllables, but its Verlan counterpart only has two, golri [ɡɔlʁi]. On
the other hand, rap [ʁap] ‘rap (music)’ is monosyllabic but its
counterpart peura has two syllables [pøʁa], and Verlan words tend to
generally be composed of one or two syllables. We also find French
words that have two attested Verlan forms. For instance, the word cité
[site] ‘hood’ is either téci [tesi] or tess [tɛs]. Verlan is quite
productive and can be applied to words that you might not expect it
to. Borrowed from English to talk about celebrities, the word star
[staʁ] has a Verlan form: reusta [ʁøsta]!

Finally, as mentioned above, Verlan is tied to specific communities
and when words become used by outsiders they tend to be changed. This
has given way to instances of reverlanizations, a second wave of
Verlan process on a word. The word arabe [aʁab], which designates
either the Arabic language or people of Arab origin, underwent
verlanization early in the 70s and 80s. This first process created the
Verlan word beur [bœʁ], which was used at the time. In 1998, France
won its first men’s soccer World Cup with a multicultural team that
had a famous motto: black-blanc-beur ‘black-white-arab’. The word beur
was everywhere at the time, including in the news and on TV. As it
became the property of mainstream media, a new form emerged in the
suburbs of Paris: rebeu [ʁøbø], the Verlan of beur! This new form took
hold and teenagers (and others) still use it in 2024, sometimes
without realizing that the base form beur is also Verlan. Nonetheless,
new words are still created nowadays, and it seems like language games
have a bright future ahead- or I should rather say a bright turfu
ahead!

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