Combining identity, rebellion and function, a form of French slang has united some and offended others. Go figure.

-- Threadbare.

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FRENCH YOU WON'T FIND IN THE ACADEMY: IMMIGRANT SLANG GROWS CHIC IN FRANCE

By ALEXANDER STILLE
c.2002 New York Times News Service


Those who have studied French but haven't been in France for a while may find themselves confused when they overhear conversations that sound familiar but remain largely incomprehensible. Gradually they may realize,
or some kind soul may explain, that what they are hearing is a popular slang called Verlan in which standard French spellings or syllables are reversed or recombined, or both.
Thus the standard greeting "Bonjour, ca va?" or "Good day, how are you?" becomes "Jourbon, ca av?" "Une fete" (a party) has become "une teuf"; the word for woman or wife, femme, has become meuf; a cafe has become feca; and so on. The word Verlan itself is a Verlanization of the term l'envers, meaning "the reverse."
Within a couple of decades, Verlan has spread from the peripheral housing projects of France's poorest immigrants, heavily populated with Africans and North African Arabs, and gained widespread popularity among
young people across France. It has seeped into film dialogue, advertising campaigns, French rap and hip-hop music, the mainstream media. It has even made it into some of the country's leading dictionaries.
A language of alienation that has, paradoxically, also become a means of integration, Verlan expresses France's love-hate relationship with its immigrant community and has begun to attract a number of scholarly studies.
"Speaking backwards becomes a metaphor of opposition, of talking back," writes Natalie Lefkowitz, a professor of French applied linguistics at Central Washington University in Ellensburg, Wash., and the author of "Talking Backwards, Looking Forwards: The French Language Game Verlan"
(Gunter Narr, 1991), which, when it was published, was one of the first major studies of Verlan. ¶
But along with its subversive element, Lefkowitz explained in an interview, "for the young urban professional, Verlan is a form of political correctness expressing solidarity with and awareness of the immigrant
community at a time of anti-immigrant politics."
The first documented uses of Verlan date to the 19th century, when it was used as a code language among criminals, said the French scholar Louis-Jean Calvet. But the current and most widespread use of Verlan has its origins in the growth of 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. In the 1960s and '70s, many North African workers were joined there by their wives and families.
"This housing that was supposed to be temporary, and was built intentionally apart from the mainstream society, became permanent," said Meredith Doran, an assistant professor of French applied linguistics at Penn State University, who recently finished a dissertation on the culture and language of the French banlieus. Their inhabitants also call a banlieu la Cite, which has been Verlanized into "la Teci."
Verlan caught on among the second generation of immigrants who were living between cultures. "They were born in France and often did not speak Arabic," Lefkowitz said, "but they did not feel integrated into France."
Doran explained, "Verlan was a way of their establishing their language and their own distinct identity." The term beur, which is a Verlanization of the French word Arabe, refers specifically to the second-
and third-generation North Africans. Until recently, there was even a radio station of French North Africans called Radio Beur.
"Verlan has many functions," writes Vivienne Mela, an anthropologist who teaches at the University of Paris VIII, in a recent article called "Verlan 2000." "Initially, it was a secret language that allowed people to speak about illicit activities without being understood. And while Verlan conserves this function, its principal function is for young people to express both their difference and their attachment to a French identity. They have invented a culture that is in between the culture of their parents, which they no longer possess, and the French culture to which they don't have complete access."
Verlan, however, is also widely spoken by the other immigrant groups of the banlieus, mainly sub-Saharan Africans and Caribbean blacks. And Verlan, along with reversing syllables and words, has also incorporated
terms from Creole, Arabic, Rom (the language of the Gypsies) and American slang to create a kind of speech of the disenfranchised.
"Verlan serves as an interface between these different groups who do not have a common language," said Alain Rey, one of the editors of the Petit Robert dictionary, the first of the standard dictionaries to
incorporate a number of Verlan terms.
More than just reversing words, scholars say, Verlan reverses what have traditionally been regarded as negative qualities in France -- ethnic and religious differences, non-French identity, nonstandard speech -- and turns them into positive attributes that are consciously cultivated.
"In a country obsessed with linguistic purity, it turns a stigma into a positive emblem, a form of covert prestige," Lefkowitz said. Verlanizing words, she and others say, changes their tone and meaning. "When you say
teci for cite, it is a way of expressing affection, like saying homeland," she added.
In the views of Rey and others, Verlan is also a playful way for the French to forge a language for dealing with ethnic, racial and religious differences. The Verlanized words for Arab, black or Jew "allow you to mark
racial and culture differences without insulting people," Lefkowitz said.
But Leyla Habane, a Moroccan-French university student who provided research assistance when Doran was working on her dissertation, is leery of that interpretation. "I think these terms can be pejorative in any form," she said, although she acknowledged that they could also be used playfully. Perhaps because it has been so widely adopted by most French, she finds the
term beur offensive.
But there is no question that Verlan is used to discuss race, ethnicity and other taboo subjects. In one recent study, the French scholars Jean-Luc Azra and Veronique Cheneau, both of the University of Paris VIII, documented about 350 Verlan terms, which tended to be clustered around a handful of subjects: illegal activities like theft and drugs; race, ethnicity and national origin; and taboo topics like sex, as well as everyday objects on the street and in the subway.
Verlan was discovered by mainstream French in the 1980s after a series of major riots and confrontations with police brought the problems of la Cite to the attention of most French. "These riots put a spotlight on the youth subculture of the banlieus, and that's when everybody noticed that these youths had this language of their own," Doran said.
A series of books and films about life in the banlieus followed, bringing Verlan to the attention of a wider public. The 1995 movie "La Haine" ("Hate"), about the lives of three housing-project friends, with much of its dialogue in Verlan, was a revelation to many French, though
some found parts of it incomprehensible. Also very popular was a film thriller called "Les Ripoux," which is a Verlanization of the French word pourri, meaning rotten. Ripoux has become a common term for corrupt police
officers.
Verlan became so popular that even former President Francois Mitterrand showed off his knowledge of it during a television interview several years ago. When he was asked whether he knew the word chebran (Verlan for branche, which means hip), he answered, of course, but added, "That's already passe; you should say cable," which literally means "wired for cable," but means "plugged in" or with-it in current slang.
Lefkowitz explained: "There are now different kinds of Verlan. There is the Verlan of the original group, the working class immigrants from the banlieus. Then there is the Verlan of the urban professionals, bourgeois Verlan or 'Verlan geoisbour.' There is also the Verlan of the teenagers who use it to distinguish themselves from the adult word as a game and a form of amusement."
The appropriation of Verlan by mainstream French culture is viewed with some uneasiness by those in the banlieus. "They find it annoying," Habane said. "They feel it is their language, and now they want to take this from us, too."
As a result, Verlan keeps renewing so that the speech of la Cite stays a step ahead of geoisbour Verlan. Many terms have also been "reverlanized." Beur, Habane said, now that it has been widely adopted by the French, is sometimes seen as pejorative, with many North African speakers using the term reub, which is beur itself turned inside out.
As a Frenchwoman of Moroccan descent pursuing a university degree, Habane expressed mixed feelings about Verlan. "I worry that it creates a kind of linguistic gap between these young people and the rest of the world that can become a trap," she said. "When I speak to some kids in my neighborhood, they often don't understand me."
And while the emulation of Verlan and banlieu culture might be flattering, she worries about recent polls showing that a majority of French feel that there are too many Arabs in the country.
Whatever the case, Verlan has made its mark on the language, said Rey, the lexicographer. "Many of them have become so common, they are not even thought of as Verlan," he said, and their proliferation in newspapers and novels has forced Le Petit Robert to include many Verlan terms in its most recent editions, to the annoyance of purists at the Academie Francaise, whose dictionary has resisted.
"We feel that a dictionary should reflect the language that is actually spoken," Rey said. "Besides, I think, on balance, there is much creativity in Verlan, and it shows that the French language is very much alive." ¶
NYT-08-16-02 1725EDT

interesting

Errr France happily force fed their language etc all over Africa, Haiti etc but now it comes back to roost they complain over purity?

Thanks for posting this! I studied French for eight years and now...wow!

Very interesting, indeed.


I speak French, & I was at 1st surprised to hear that "verlan" even existed. Not surprisingly, I was told about verlan by some (GORGEOUS) North African female friends of mine who (again, surprise) lived east of Paris.


As a non-native French speaker with a limited depth of knowledge of French culture, I'm somewhat torn between "traditional" French & verlan. I think French is a very beautiful language, spoken in its original form, but I have also taken to using verlan in some situations. I would have to say that I prefer French in its "traditional form, maybe because that's what I learned, that's what I identify most with..

It seems like verlan- in all its various forms today- is here to stay.

1 thing about the article that bothered me was that so many French words didn't have their usual French accents. It's hard to read & understand French without the accents, because the pronunciation & meaning of the word changes, depending on whether there is/are accents or not.


This talk about French is really making me want to be there & speak French.. something I do miss doing..


oh la...

I got so caught up in the French part of this article, I forgot to say something about French verlan & US ebonics..


The difference I see between verlan & ebonics (again, using my limited knowledge of verlan & how it came to be & all that)
is
verlan was conciously chosen, developed & used as a way to communicate among members of certain "minority" groups.. I don't have the impression that they were forbidden to learn "standard French" like slaves in the US had been, back during the time of slavery, then continuing with the inferior education received by the children, grandchildren & great grandchildren of those slaves..

Big deal, les Français... In Quebec, we've been living with "joual" forever. We have learned to defend both the French language and Joual itself, by making efforts to popularize the proper French words while acknowledging their joual equivalents in plays, television, movies and advertising. The French may be a bit more vulnerable though... Why? French is a minority language in Canada, so we have built some pretty strong defenses against the mighty English language. In France, French is of course the language of the majority. Those who think the French are extremelly protective of their language are mistaken. Their government is, but the French themselves love to borrow from English, often preferring them to perfectly good French words because they sound more "branché" (hip). Verlan Chic might accelerate this trend for a while, but there's always been some French slang around, so I wouldn't think the bells are tolling for the French language just yet.

Hey, thanks for all of your responses. I think the evolution of language is universal, whether it's found in English-speakers ending questions in prepositions (a characteristic found in "ebonics" and other, more relaxed forms of speech) or whether in Verlan, a hybrid I find really interesting.

I find purists' stakes in the language (and I know everyone has their own linguistic line somewhere that they dare not cross -- one of mine is the aforementioned prepositional practice) are sometimes tied to their own classist hang-ups: "I can't talk like that, no matter how functional it is, because those people talk that way. Verlan -- and other, similar hybrids -- seem to have turned that notion on its head by being celebrated FOR being different.