The evolution of verlan, a type of French slang If you went to France, ready to engage with the current urban culture, you might hear strange words like teuf or vénère you never learnt in lessons. This is ‘verlan’, a form of French slang akin to pig-latin in English. It has been so widely used in France that some words have even made it into the official dictionary. It works by reversing the syllables of keywords. For example, the word français can be split into ‘fran’ and ‘çais’, then rearranged to form çaisfran (or céfran). This is done to single syllable words too like fou (crazy) which becomes ouf. In fact, the name verlan itself comes from reversing the syllable of l’envers, meaning reverse. This system of reversing syllables has actually been dated back to the 17th century when political pamphlets used the term Bonbours for the royal house of the Bourbons. In the 18th century, writer Francois-Marie Arouet used the pen name Voltaire, suspected to have come from the reversed syllables of Airvault, the name of a town where his family had roots. Verlan became much more familiar in World War II when it was used by younger generations to confuse the Germans occupying France at the time. Verlan began featuring in songs and movie titles, soon becoming prevalent in hip-hop and rap music. Today, verlan words have made their way into everyday speech and even the official language, however, it is still strongly associated with urban youth. Verlan is a sort of secret language among social groups so naturally, as words become widely used, new words are created. ‘Double verlan’ is when a word that has already been inverted is reversed again to form a slightly different word. An example of this is the word femme (woman): In verlan it is meuf, a word which is used often, and in double verlan it is feumeu. Comparing verlan with pig-latin is interesting from a linguistics view because it highlights how the French language differs from English even though they use the same alphabet. While, individual letters can be manipulated in English, there is a stronger emphasis on syllables in French because of silent letters and vowel sounds. Very often multiple consonants and vowels are pronounced with one vowel sound, for example, ‘ille’ is pronounced ‘ee’. Additionally, verlan is primarily verbal so the spelling of words in verlan is debated. Some people argue that verlan is ruining French while others say it broadens the language, but either way it has irreversibly become a part of the culture today. Anaya Jaffer
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