If you have ever attempted to learn French and communicate with a native speaker, or scrolled for five minutes on the short video clip dispenser of your choice, you will know how evil the French are. No matter how perfect your pronunciation or attempts at communication, the average Frenchman will tell you his English is better than your French and proceed to butcher the English language worse than the Australians.
This pretension surrounding the French language goes all the way to the top. The Académie Française is a council of 40, known as les immortels (“the immortals”), each elected by those who were already on the council. Once one is on the council, they are on it for life. The purpose of the Académie Française is to regulate what “proper” French is. This is done through the creation of various dictionaries that describe proper spelling, grammar and which words are “real French.” The academy has a history of conservatism, keeping the word “la ministre” meaning female minister (a feminine alternative to the masculine “le ministre”), from entering the language. They also have a history of combating anglicisms, or English words and phrases, being adopted into French (the British might want to consider their own British English Academy before they shift fully to American English).
In response to the strict institutions regulating French, the French people (known haters of authority) created Verlan. Verlan is a type of argot, a slang that is meant to keep outgroups from understanding, that forms words by flipping the syllables. For example, to create an English Verlan word using the base word “woman,” one would flip the syllables, creating the word “manwo.” Words in Verlan tend to keep some of the original meaning, while becoming more “vulgar.” As in our previous example, the Verlan word that would be equivalent is “meuf” which, if translated back to English, would be comparable to the words “bird” or “chick.” These words are typically inserted into typical French sentences; only a few in each sentence, creating an emphasis of the Verlan words.
Verlan was created both as a response to the Académie Française and as a means of social identification, to hide criminal activity and as a form of rebellion against society at large. The language came to prominence in the 19th century as a means of hiding criminal activity and was later picked up by youth as a means of cultural identity. One of its earliest uses was by the children of immigrants from former French colonies and Muslim countries as a means of representing verbally the difficulty of children of immigrants to feel fully part of any country or ethnicity. In the generations since its inception, Verlan has become widespread; most French speakers use words or phrases from the language. In 2005, the French president Nicolas Sarkozy used the Verlan word “caillera,” an inversion of the word “racaille,” akin to the English “scum.” Verlan has been further propagated through French rap and the internet.
Some of the most common Verlan words one might hear if visiting France can often be translated into slang used in English-speaking countries. For example, “teuf” is the reversal of the French word for party, but its meaning more closely aligns with the English word “rave,” while other words, such as “reum,” a play on the French word for “mother,” do not have any close approximation.
The use of Verlan to soften and hide the meaning of “vulgar” language, while at the same time making common words more “vulgar,” allows for some creative uses of the concept of flipping syllables. One of the most interesting instances of Verlan is the use of the phrase/name “Lebron James” to mean masturbation, which does both simultaneously. The basic French slang phrase for masturbation, or a more accurate translation, would be the English phrase “jacking off,” which is “se branler.” To Verlanise “se branler,” one would switch the syllables in “branler” to create the phrase “se lerbran,” which, when spoken out loud, sounds like the name Lebron. The phrase was then expanded to be Lebron James. This means the name Lebron James, which tends to have neutral to positive associations, has been turned “vulgar,” while the “vulgar” act of masturbation has been softened.
This, however, does not mean that one can go to France and start flipping every syllable in every word and expect to be understood. Verlan has a limited vocabulary that one must stay within to demonstrate oneself to be a member of the in-group. So, if you want to become fluent in Verlan, it’s time to book your tickets.
