Wardsback
L’argot, c’est le verbe devenu forçat !
– Victor Hugo
A few (ahem) weeks ago, someone wrote to ask about verlan. ‘So what the hell is verlan?’ said he. So, by way of an apology for being such a truly lousy correspondent, here is what I know.
Verlan is part of a dizzy array of French argots and patois, which includes langue verte, baragouin, gazouillis, jar, joual, and loucherbem and largonji which are sort of like pig Latin.
(Even if you don’t speak French, you can at least appreciate that the added bonus of this last link is the fact that it resides, inexplicably, on an international meatpackers’ site.)
The word argot originally referred to the slang used by soldiers and ne’er do wells. But of course professions too also developed their own jargon, as did classes, regions and neighbourhoods – the same delicious remodelling of the core speak that happens on every inch of the globe. I believe jargon itself was originally a Provençal word meaning slang, and was probably onomatopoeia.
In earlier times of aristocrat rule, argot was poo-pooed and associated with the lowly classes, but gradually gained in popularity as it made its way into literature – from Vidocq and Balzac on up – and popular song. But because of the hegemony of the capital city, the most widely recorded is no doubt Parisian slang. (A terrible pity, but a whole other diatribe.)
In today’s French slang, the favourite mechanisms for distorting words include adding suffixes somewhat randomly – ard, -asse, -ax, -oque, -ouille, os… – so matériel (gear) becomes matos, calme-toi (calm down) becomes calmos, when it sucks it’s craignos, Americans become Amerloques, Paris: Paname and nichons (boobs): nibards. And where would we be without those.
Pinot becomes pineau becomes pinard to mean plonk and later to mean wine, tout court.
Popular too is truncating either the front or back end of a word. So restaurant becomes resto, pétard (joint) becomes pèt, problème becomes blème, music: zik, Beaujolais: beaujo, and masochists enjoy the further humiliation of maso.
For obvious reasons of imperialism and geography, French slang is now home to a host of Arabic words: kifer (to like), kif-kif (the same), bled (village), chouïa (a little), maboul (nuts/goofy), se barrer (to leave (quickly)), macache (not at all), cafarder (to rat), clebs (dog)…
As English makes its insidious and often gratuitous way in:
You can take un break, be bodybuildé, when depressed avoir les blues, collapser, and être down. You can avoid your punk friend because he’s much too destroy, un junkie, his music’s too hard, il est too much; you like son look, but, bordel, when he watches la téloche il ne fait que du zapping.
As for verlan, well, it’s verlan: backwards slang for the word l’envers, which means backwards. To make a word in verlan, you cut the original word in two (or three) and put the last syllable first and first syllable last (if there’s a third or fourth syllable, they go in the middle).
Verlan’s been around since at least the 1930s – some say much longer, and they’re probably right – but started becoming popular in the 1970s. It began in the Paris suburbs – mostly in the housing projects inhabited by low income, and often immigrant families (called les cités, or técis in verlan). So a lot of the first words in backwards slang were the ones being used by teenagers in the projects, often relating to drugs, sex and crime and, like a lot of slang, meant to be incomprehensible to outsiders. In the 80s and 90s, verlan was a mainstay of early French rap. (Say what you will; some of it is downright kyfun.)
So, in verlan a rotten (pourri) cop is called a ripou, an Arab is a beur (and flipped again to become a robeu), a Frenchman becomes a céfran, une femme (woman) a meuf, fête becomes teuf, vas-y (go!) is zyva, and barjot (slang, originally meaning naïve & bourgeois, later signifying just plain crazy) becomes the spit-collecting word jobard.
And where would be without those.
One-syllable words are simply pronounced backwards in the main: fou (nuts) becomes ouf, and cool becomes looc (as in Looc hand Luke).
So – in homage to belabouring a point – in English, doobie would be beedoo, cop would be pock, booties: teeboos, coffee the unappetizing feeco, and organization: too much for my little brain to handle.
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Comment
- In Secret Paris of the 30s Brassai mentions how the hip gangsters often couldn’t understand one another.
— matthew Jan 18, 9:01pm # - Your big brain.
— Ajax Bucky Jan 18, 11:27pm # - wow! i’m am just blown away by all that cultural change in language.. amazing!
— jennir Jan 19, 7:54am # - Youth-book publisher Milan has a nice booklet on
“Argot, verlan et tchatches” ISBN: 2-84113-584-5
(or would that be NBSI ?)
— Raf Jan 20, 8:05am # - I’m sorry but your definition of “Verlan” is wrong. You say:”Verlan is part of a dizzy array of French argots and patois”. This is incorrect. When people speak “Verlan” they reverse syllables, so “Chicken” would become “Kenchi”.
“Verlan” in the reversed version of “A l’envers” which mean “reversed” in French. Your article is interesting though!
— Masto Domwiz Jan 21, 2:47am # - Oooops… should have read the entire article first. Oh well, you know, passionate people… :)
— Masto Domwiz Jan 21, 2:53am # - Restricting verlan to a linguistic trick would be about as off-the-mark as elevating it to a fully-fledged patois.
While some slangs make heavy use of it, how phonemes displacements/substitutions and alteration is subject to informal yet unforgiving rules depending on context (ie which slang a given verlan trick must fit into).
While verlan is a major player in the french hip-hop vocabulary, where form ranks way over substance, it has to play by the house rules, namely sound good to the discriminative ear of the educated “scarla”, verlan for the french slang “lascar” (for “bad boy”).
As is often the case of slangs moving into mainstream, early adopters tend to forgo the most widely reused forms of their slang, or use widespread or ill-fitting forms in a derivative or parodic way.
Because of the mainly oral culture it happens in, verlan is based on phonation, not spelling, and “funky” in french (prononced with the proper ‘bad boy’ accent and written same) is “fonky”, which sounds roughly like [fone’kee], and therefore would probably become “kyfon” [kee-fon’] or “kyonf” [k’y-honf].
Problem is, “fonky” already owns the place…
“Kyfun” is a good case of what any self respecting french suburb-slang speaker would only use to mock outsiders trying to act “cool” – which incidentally would be “lekou” and not “looc”, if only because of the homophony with “look” (used in the fashion jargon sense of the term, for “dress style”).
Conversely, “doobie” indeed became “bédo” [bey-doh].
Good quick shot at what could make for a PhD-class topic (and I suspect has, already), though.
—————————PS: You were joking about the “loucherbem” article striking you as inexplicably residing on a meatpacker’s site, right ?
— Yaka St.Aise Jan 21, 11:41am # - Ma’am,
a truly informative article on a fascinating topic!
We have just finished Stephenson’s The Confusion & he writes of Sabir – the bastard language of gypsies & vagabonds – and zargon – which we presume to indicate the local dialect.
Interestingly, in australia we have heard tell of a ‘butchers’ language’ whereby words are spoken backwards.
very Ozzy.
what is it with butchers that they need to be so secretive?
Bless Y’all
Le Rev Dr
— Le Rev Dr Jan 28, 2:57am #
commenting closed for this article