Verlan: What is it, how does it work and where does it come from ?
Formation, rules and processes
Every language develops at some point in its history a slang; that is to say a non-standard form of language where structures and words are altered to different extents. For instance, everyone has heard of Cockney Rhyming Slang. CRS sees the replacement of an expression by a different one but with which it rhymes. A common example can be “to have a butcher’s”, which is short for “ a butcher’s hook” which itself replaces “to have a look” where the rhymed element “hook” is deleted which gives zero clue as to which word to look for.
French slang has a name; that is “verlan”. “Verlan” is itself a product of its creating system, meaning that the word underwent a process of “verlanisation”, i.e: inverting syllables. “Verlan” comes from the phrase “à l’envers”, where the initial “à” was dropped and the second syllable <-vers> was put before the first one <l’en>, giving the /vɛʁlɑ̃/ pronunciation and the simplified orthography. Verlan has been strongly associated with the lower classes of suburbs and poorest areas of cities. But it is also associated with young people whose parents are from former French colonies, especially North Africa and sub-Saharan Africa because of the sociological composition of suburbs at the time when verlan was getting attention, also because of the cliché that sees suburbs being mostly populated by former immigrants and their descendants. However, verlan is not restricted to ethnicities. Its usage is more sociolectal than ethnolectal.
This is the basis of the Verlan system, inverting syllables in words. The words that experience verlanisation are often dissyllabic:
cité ==> téci (slang for “the hood”)
quartier ==> tierquar (”neighbourhood”)
ghetto ==> togué (”ghetto”)
manger ==> géman (”to eat”)
merci ==> cimer (”thanks”)
tomber ==> béton (in the phrase “laisse tomber”, meaning “forget it, drop it”)
branché ==> chébran ( “to be hip”, no longer in used, old-fashioned verlan, dated)
bizarre ==> zarbi (”strange”, “weird”. Also used for the name in French for the Unown Pokémon)
However, there are many monosyllabic words that are changed too. These monosyllabic words most often see the inversion of the initial and final consonants and the alteration of the remaining vowel. Such examples are as follows:
juif ==> feuj (”jew”, “jewish”)
femme ==> meuf (”woman”, “girl”, “girlfriend”)
mec ==> keum (”bloke”, “dude”, “guy”. “Mec” is also slang)
flic ==> keuf (”cop”, “policeman”. “Flic” is itself a slang word)
joint ==> oinj (”joint” to smoke weed)
black ==> keubla (”a black person”)
You’ll notice that in the majority of cases of verlanised monosyllabic words, the remaining vowel is drastically changed: /ɥi/, /a/, /ɛ/ and /i/ are harmonised into [œ] or [ø] and . This happens because of the treatment of the final “e”, which is in French mostly mute. However, when applying the Verlan Inversion System on the word, it treats them as if they were also dissyllabic and searches for a second syllable. This second syllable is found by pronouncing the “e muet” (as in “femme” /fam/ and “fête” /fɛt/) but in words like “juif”, “mec” or “flic” there is no such “e” to utter. Therefore the Verlan Inversion System will insert an “e” even though there was none in the original word. And since French treats its schwas [ə] like [œ] or [ø] , the orthography is changed to accommodate this pronunciation, with <eu> instead of a mere <e>. Words with more than two syllables have a fluctuating verlanised form. “Cigarette” can be “garette” or “garetteci”.
Verlanisation can also be combined with other processes like with an apocope or a second verlanisation. The best example of the latter is the path taken by the word “arabe”. “Arabe” (”arabic”) was verlanised into “beur” but this form fell out of use because of its usage by people who were not from the suburbs denatured it. It didn’t feel like it was a verlan word anymore, it didn’t sound like coded speech anymore, it was too widespread and not exclusive enough. So it went through a second process of inversion that gave “rebeu” (or “reubeu” depending on the pronunciation of the former mute “e”). “Arabe” > “Beur” > “Rebeu”. Regarding apocopes, we have the words “ frère” > “refré” > “reuf” ; “parents” > “renpas” > “renps”. You see that the syllables <-ré> and <-a> are deleted.
So now that we know what verlan is and how it works, how did it come about ? Where does it come from ? How long has it been in use ?
Origins and sociolinguistics of verlan
The origins of this French slang is everything but clear. It is hard to say when verlan actually came in use on a large scale. Historians and linguists have been able to find traces of syllable inversions as far back as the 12th century. Lefkowitz (1991, pp 50-54) mentions that verlan was a linguistic game at the time, that in “Tristan and Isolde” Tristan reversed the order of the syllables of his names to remain hidden from the queen of Ireland. In the 14th century, this form of slang was used in the criminal underworld and in the homosexual circles to avoid being overheard.
French writer Auguste Le Breton claims that he invented the word “verlen” with an <e>, in an interview with Le Monde in 1985. Indeed, there are traces of verlen/verlan in his 1953 book, Du rififi chez les hommes. He was well-known in and was a part of the underworld and was well-versed in their speech and method of coding. However, pretending that he invented it is quite a stretch since there are centuries-old testimonies of it. For instance, it is speculated that Voltaire (who is the top illustration of this post. I scrambled his picture before I even knew I’d talk about him) took his nom-de-plume by changing the order of the city or Airvault, where a part of his family is from. It was used mostly by criminals up to the very late 20th century, when people from French colonies came by the thousands in mainland France. Its use skyrocketed in the 1970s and was popularised in the 1980s and 90s thanks to the emergence of young hip-hop artists that used verlan in their songs. The hip-hop movement, much like in the USA, resonated with people who were, economically and socially, on the fringe of society. People who had come to France and their children were often put in large newly-constructed and cheap buildings of poor quality and design.
Verlan developed in these economically-marginalised areas because it also offered an instrument of social empowerment to its speakers. It allowed them to exclude those that were not part of their shared social environments. It gave them the opportunity to create their own community and select those who will be a member of it in an attempt to fight the seclusion that was imposed on them. Verlan is an identity-marker. Its words sprinkled here and there in sentences show implicitly where one comes from.
I mentioned earlier the case of the word “beur” which had experienced a second verlanisation. This case is symbolic of the identity-charged nature of verlan; because the word “beur” had got in the more mainstream Frenches, it had lost its power to hold off non-speakers. As Alena Podhorná-Polická (2006) explains, verlan in the 1980s and 90s was seen as something hip and trendy, something that had to be used to show that one was “in” and still in touch with the youth. Podhorná-Polická speaks of the success of the word as a type of “cultural appropriation”, which left those who could use verlan words without their linguistic gates. Their community gates had been busted open by the mainstream society. So in order to regain what was lost, words like “beur” were inverted once more into “reubeu” to show that the former form “beur” was not anymore a token of verlan.
The spreading of verlan is also emblematic of a certain period in the history of the country. It is emblematic of a France that wanted to embrace its multiculturalism, its zenith happened in 1998 when France won at home the Football World Championship. The team was held as a herald of what France should be like; diverse, ambitious, accepting. The team was comprised of players whose ascendancy was from sub-Saharan Africa and French West Indies, North Africa or other European countries. This diversity gave rise to the phrase “Black Blanc Beur”. The success of a multi-cultural team facilitated the acceptation of slang verlan words into more common forms of speech.
Verlan is also strongly stigmatised when used out of proper contexts. As I underlined, its strong affiliation with the poor and sometimes violent suburbs contributes to its image of uncouthness and lack of education.
tl;dr Verlan is a process of French slang which sees the inversion of syllables in words, the result is often dissyllabic and because of the phonotactics of French the vowel often ends up being an [œ] despite its original quality. Traces of verlan can be found as far back the 12th and 14th century but was used in context speech coding and was limited to the underworld and homosexual circles. Today it is associated with the youth (mostly sons and daughters of immigrants) of poor and (sometimes violent) suburbs. Verlan was popularised in the 1980s and 90s through the success of hip-hop songs, making the youth, hip-hop and slang in France three tightly-linked aspects of the lives of suburb-dwellers. Though it can be seen as a badge to show where one is from, verlan can be used by people outside of these circles to bolster their “street cred”. Verlan can be an identity-builder for many users, it can also be an obstacle when used in the wrong contexts given the prejudices that are linked to this form of speech and where it is mostly used.
Sources and further readings:
Les Aspects Stylistiques de la Verlanisation, Alena Podhorná-Polická (2006)
Verlan et back-slangs autour du monde
«Wesh», symbole de la vitalité de la langue française, Slate.fr
Do you speak verlan? , The Guardian
French Verlan for Dummies
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