Hello everyone welcome to Paul and my name is the Lang focus channel
several months ago
I released a video on the French language and more recently I released a video on cockney rhyming slang
And that got me thinking about french slang yes despite all the efforts of the French Academy
L'académie
Française to promote proper French or formal french french slang does exist and is commonly used
One interesting type of French slang is called verlan that name verlan comes from the word l'envers
meaning backwards or inverse
The word syllables are reversed and we get verlan. The name of this type of slang contains an example of the slang
Verlan is a kind of metathesis
Side by side sounds switching positions and in this type the basic idea is that two syllables in a word switch places with each other
Note that this kind of slang originates in the spoken language so the spelling of the slang word comes from its sound rather than vice-versa
the S at the end of l'envers is silent, that's why it's not part of the word verlan
I think you all know the standard French word Merci. In verlan, it's cimer.
I'm sure you also know the word Bonjour. Can you guess what it would be in verlan?
Yes, it's jourbon. There's the word future. In verlan
It's turfu. Then there's the word Metro the metro or subway in verlan
it's tromé and the word bizarre meaning weird or bizarre in verlan it's zarbi.
So where did this slang come from and who uses it? Verlan began to arise in the decades following World War two in the
poor suburbs of Paris since then it has entered mainstream
Culture through music TV movies and so on it's still used most heavily by young people in les banlieues
Low-income suburbs of France's major cities where mostly immigrants and their descendants live but a certain amount of Vietnam is used by the wider
mainstream population especially young people this sentence contains one of the most mainstream violent words
Mon mec mate les autres meufs dans la rue. This means my boyfriend looks at other girls on the street the verlan word here is meuf
This is an inversion of the word femme, so it generally means woman or girl, but in the phrase ma meuf
It means my girlfriend as opposed to ma femme which means my wife
I guess the formality of the relationship is reflected in the formality of the word
The word mec is not verlan
But is also slang which means something like guy or dude and mon mec means my boyfriend in Paris though
You might hear people say keum
Which is a very long version of mec.
But that one is less common than myth it might not be immediately obvious how these single syllable words become reversed at the end
of the word femme for instance
There is a release after the M consonant like a schwa
Femme that ma at the end becomes the first syllable in the reversed word and fact becomes the second syllable
But then the final vowel is dropped the schwa sound from gets spelled as EU and the vowel sound
naturally changes a little bit
This is how most single syllable verlan words are formed a few more examples. Mère meaning mother becomes reum
J'habite chez ma reum. This sentence means: I live at my mom's place
Père meaning father becomes reup. Fête meaning party becomes teuf
On fait une teuf à la sonmai?
Are we having a party at home in this sentence contains
One more verlan word sonmai which is a reversal of maison, the word meaning house
Sometimes not just a vowel but a consonant might disappear if it's awkward to pronounce
There's the word flic which means cop like a police officer and the verlan word is keuf
You might be expecting it to sound like could flee but the final syllable gets dropped
And it's just keuf. Attention v'là les keufs! this means watch out the cops are here
V'là by the way is an abbreviated form of voilà
Another common change that happens, is that a sound is removed before the inversion takes place
So we have the word legal a meaning to laughs which becomes
golri
So the ER ending was removed from the word before reversing the two syllables the innovators of slang normally stay one step ahead of the
General population and when a word or expression becomes two common they often stop using it in the case of verlan
some words have become
re-verlanized or like double verlan before I mentioned the word flic which became verlanized to keuf
But that word has become very well-known so people verlanized it again to feuk
Maybe it was re-verlanized
because the police started to understand the word keuf and people wanted to talk about the police without them understanding
Another example the verlan version of the word a arabe meaning Arab is beur and this is one of the most well known
verlan words it became re-verlanized as rebeu and meuf from family woman
sometimes gets re-verlanized to feumeu. The use of verlan is not constant or consistent
It's usually limited to a couple of words in each sentence and those same words are not always used in their slang form
also
when verbs are verlanized they can't be conjugated so verbs are only used in these forms the infinitive the
Present tense the imperative and also the past participle so for example for the word
golri from rigoler - laughs you can say je golri meaning, I laugh
J'ai golri meaning I laughed with this functioning as the past participle or je vais golri
I'm going to laugh with this being the infinitive form you could also use the imperative form Golri!
But the meaning of that imperative form would be kind of strange for this verb. For any of the other conjugations
you need to use the standard verb rigoler and conjugate it for example for the conditional present form you would use
rigolerais. So verlan is somewhat limited in when it can be used now
Let's check out a few examples of verlan in context these examples all come from the French film called La Haine.
This movie takes place in one of the lower income
suburbs of Paris where most of the population are of immigrant background. The film contains numerous examples of verlan here's the first clip
Ta gueule. Téma la vache, téma la vache. The guy in the clip says Téma la vache.
Which means look at the cow this word téma is the verlan word for
mater a verb which we saw earlier in this sentence mon mec
mate les autres meufs dans la rue. Now let's see that one more time a little slower
version here's one more clip with the same word
This time someone says Téma le virage meaning watch the turn now, let's see that one more time
Here's another clip with a different example
In this clip the guy says Je suis le démon de la turevoi! meaning
I'm the demon of the car and the scene they're about to steal a car
The verlan word is turevoi which comes from voiture - meaning car
He actually pronounces the second syllable in a more casual way saying something like "turwee" of way instead of "turevoi"?
Now let's see that one more time a little slower
And one more example "Va te coucher, l'relou"
The guy in the clip says "Va te coucher, l'relou"
Which means go to sleep annoying guy or something like that the word relou comes from the word lourd which means heavy but
relou means annoying or irritating. Now let's see that one more time, Va te coucher, l'relou.
Verlan is a dynamic form of slang meaning that it's always changing
And old words might go out of use and new words might arise or words might become re-verlanized
It's a kind of casual speech that you won't find in textbooks
And you might find confusing when you first encounter it you can learn some verlan online or from books
But you might sound funny if you overdo it in the wrong context
So it's probably best to learn it in context when speaking with native speakers but for our purposes here today
It's simply an interesting linguistic
phenomenon to examined be sure to follow Langfocus on Facebook Twitter and Instagram and once again
Thank you to all of my amazing patreon supporters. Especially these ones right here on the screen
These are my top true patreon supporters and very many thanks to them as always. Thank you for watching and have a nice day