A (Literally) Backwards Language

It was refreshing to read about the street-slang culture of France, because I definitely have a view of the French as being snobbish about the purity of their language (especially hearing about others’ experiences in France!) But a newly produced slang dictionary called the “Lexik des cites” is now being hailed as a cultural achievement in France. The dictionary was created by ten men and women from southern Paris and translates caillera, which is the mix of old argot, Arabic, black American, African, Creole, and Romany primarily spoken by the minority low-income populations.

The article gave some examples of these slang words:

kéblo: inhibited (reverse form of bloqué, or blocked)
bellek: look out (from African Arabic)
un meskin: poor sod (from Arabic meaning of poor; means ungenerous in standard French)
un flow: smooth talker (from US rap)
un frolo: boy (from the film The Hunchback of Notre Dame)
kalech: skint (from old Parisian calèche, a wagon to the poor house)

It’s surprising to see the diversity of sources from which the words are derived; the language seems to be culled from across geographical, historical, cultural, and social spheres.

One of these sources is verlan, a popular slang in which standard French spellings or syllables are reversed or recombined, or both. For example, “Bonjour, ça va?" or "Good day, how are you?" becomes "Jourbon, ça av?"And the word Verlan itself is a Verlanization of the term l'envers, meaning "the reverse.”

This language—for I would argue that Verlan has become a language—has a really interesting history. The first documented use of Verlan dates back to the 19th century, when it was used as a code language among criminals. But it was revived in France's banlieus, the peripheral areas outside major cities, where the government built high-rise housing for its immigrant worker population after World War II, and which later became home to many North African workers in the 1960’s and 70’s. These second generation immigrants of the banlieus were thus caught between cultures: they were born in France, but did not feel integrated into France, living in an area that had been intentionally built apart from the mainstream society. So Verlan became “a way of their establishing their language and their own distinct identity.” Verlan then spread across the other immigrant groups of the banlieus, mainly sub-Saharan Africans and Caribbean blacks, becoming the “speech of the disenfranchised,” as anthropologist Vivienne Mela puts it. It further served as a way of connecting these different groups who didn’t have a common language.

From the banlieus, Verlan was discovered by mainstream French in the 1980's after a series of major riots brought the problems of the immigrant housing to the attention of most French; the language became more popular after the publication of several books and productions of movies about life in the banlieus. Its popularity—especially with young liberals—can be explained by the fact that the language had a subversive element: it both became a metaphor of opposition and the counter-culture, and represented solidarity with and awareness of the immigrant community. Today, Verlan has gained widespread popularity among young people across France, seeping into film dialogue, advertising campaigns, French rap and hip-hop music, and even making it into some of the country's leading dictionaries.

And, interestingly, Verlan has become a way for the French to speak about more taboo topics, such as race, ethnicity, and sex. Natalie Lefkowitz, a professor of French applied linguistics, says that, “Verlanizing words changes their tone and meaning.” The Verlanized words for Arab, black or Jew, for example, "allow you to mark racial and culture differences without insulting people.” And a recent study documented about 350 Verlan terms, which tended to cluster around taboo topics. It’s as though the remnants of illicitness and informality that surround Verlan gives the speakers a sense that the words carry less weight and makes it easier to discuss these topics. But maybe it also has to do with the identity of the speakers; Verlan is most widely spoken by young people, who—independently of Verlan—have different vocabularies (both in content and form) from those of older generations.

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/non-fiction/article2827616.ece

http://www.mtholyoke.edu/~cskarocz/french370/boumkoeur/verlan.html