The Future Impact of Verlan

In his article entitled Les fractures linguistiques, Jean-Louis Clavet affirms his belief that verlan continues to play a role in stigmatising immigrants within the banlieues. He also states, rather down-heartedly, that the situation of a fractured society embodied by a fractured language will only worsen as young banlieue members grow older and their children learn to speak in the same divisive manner as their parents, ensuring the continuation of their separation from wider society. This use of argot and verlan will perpetuate and instil a separation of banlieues, causing future generations to cling onto this use of language as a part of their identity rather than to reject it as an obsolete manner of communication which has a negative impact upon their integration with other sectors of the social order. Calvet notes that the endemic unemployment and social unrest of the banlieues goes hand-in-hand with the cultural separation, in which the use of argot and verlan plays a considerable role, of these districts from others.

Hence, the development of argot and in particular of verlan has served for nothing more than to pollute the magical French language of Molière; to present a language of deceit for criminals and miscreants and to engrain social divide between the banlieues sensibles and the rest of French society. Its cultural impact has only presented a manner in which to instil division and to create a multicultural society which is determined to remain separated by its multiethnic origins. This rather bizarre form of anagram has evolved into something far more damaging than one could have imagined, offering the disguise of vulgarities from those about whom they are spoken and giving young people in the toughest schools and areas an increased vocabulary to offend and abuse. But, is there not something beautiful about its diversity? Is not the brilliance of language in its evolution? Are not rappers urban poets whose work Molière would fully appreciate?

The Social Impact of Verlan Today

Title: 'Young people: "Go f**k the rich off"'

Verlan continued to be popular in the early 1990s following its surge to the forefront of French society in the 1980s (read my post on the the reasons for verlan's popularisation in the 1980s now and then come back here). By the turn of the millennium, verlan was understood and used by more or less all echelons of society, forming a part of French language, and ending up far from its initially divisive image. However, there remain certain factions of society who continue to use verlan in its purest form in their daily lives. These factions are comprised largely (but not entirely) of immigrant communities who continue to inhabit the banlieues sensibles. 

French society remains incredibly divided and the inhabitants of these banlieues, while a part of France, certainly do not share the same sense of national pride, togetherness and fellowship as members of the working and middle classes. Their relationship with the rest of French society is incredibly fragile and, it is important to add, a two-way bond. 

While France’s intolerance towards outsiders is well-known, as is captured in films such as La Haine in which three young men are trapped in the Parisian economic, ethnic and social underclass and which evidently demonstrates the stigmatization of the multiracial communities of the banlieues. However, there are two sides to this hostility and there is no doubt that the vast majority of this so-called underclass do little to try to integrate themselves with the rest of society. Their use of verlan is one example of this.

As verlan became increasingly mainstream, so the banlieues searched to distinguish themselves further from the middle-class youths who had adopted their originally purposefully divisive language. According to linguist Alain Rey ‘Le verlan c'est devenu trop « relou»!’ Following a study into the use of verlan today within the suburbs of Paris, Rey ascertained that ‘almost all of France has adopted words such as ‘meufs’, ‘oufs’ and ‘chelou’ which were born in the suburbs. But this verlanis no longer popular in the suburbs where new words are making their appearance.’  It is for this precise reason that verlan continues to evolve, with new words formed daily in an attempt from those on the cusps of French society to remain distinct from their national counterparts. 

Abdelkarim Tengour – creator and owner of the website www.dictionnairedelazone.fr– who has spent years collating and recording the newest uses of argot within the French language said that the most potent force in the development of French argot has been, without doubt, the integration of more and more words of Arab origin. He said that these Arab words have then formed a new basis for ‘verlanisation’. 

Argot then represents identification for these banlieue members who use it as a means to cling onto some of their ancestry in their now much westernised surroundings by introducing words from Arabic or other languages into their French. For many in the banlieues sensibles this argot and use of verlan is viewed possessively as a product of their desire to remain distinct from the rest of society. It is far more than just a slang language; it represents their independence and they therefore feel an almost paternal protectiveness over it. 

There is no greater proof of their utter refusal to accept the use of their argot by members of wider society than their feeling for the need to ‘reverlanise’ words. This is to say that words which have become commonplace in the language of all layers of French society (such as beur) have been ‘reverlanised’ (to reub) by the suburbs specifically in order to symbolise their division from wider society.

Here we begin to see that verlan, in fact, presents a rather profound insight into French society as a whole and begins to illustrate the engrained social divide, whose eviction is currently far behind that of countries such as the United Kingdom. With far greater racial, social and political tension and a far less certain national identity, perhaps we finally begin to see why (as was touched on right at the start of this essay) the French language, and its argot in particular, remains quite so diverse. 

Different registers of language (including ‘slang’) in Britain would certainly have been present between different social classes in times gone by. For example, in the 17^th Century of Oliver Twist, Britain’s slang marked an apparent divide between the lower, working class (of pick-pockets for example) who used it, and the middle class who did not understand it in the slightest. However, this rigid social divide has perished and with it has much of the differentiation of language between classes. Today, as British society aims for a universally accepted means of communication which allows all people to learn and access information regardless of social standing, we strive for equality of literacy and speech. By apparent contrast, French society has not progressed quite so straightforwardly in this regard and its division of society is reflected in its division of language and in particular of slang.

What made Verlan Popular in the 1980s?

Verlanhas had an enormous impact upon French argot for many years and has gradually evolved into the form it takes today. Despite its long and engrained position as a part of French language and literature, it was not until the 1980s that it saw its true rise to power. Its great surge to the national stage is owed almost wholly to the mass media. 

Be it via television, film, music or literature, technology permitted the transmission of the multiethnic and hybrid cultures of les cités (the suburbs) into wider society, and this included their use of argot – and in particular verlan – in ordinary speech. Ever since the 1977 hit single Laisse Béton by popular French singer songwriter Renaud, the francophone world has born witness to the inexorable diffusion of this now omnipresent syllabic inversion. 

For young people in the 1980s, verlan provided a fashionable way to distinguish themselves from both previous generations and more upright members of society. They used it as an unambiguous social marker between those who could and could not understand it; there is a definite appeal to the ability to communicate without being understood by others and young people certainly took great pleasure from the annoyance which they aroused in all members of society who had no idea what this new language meant. It became a game of wit and cunning between young members of the banlieues, as they tried to out-do others with their innovative verlan creations.

At this stage, two major and intertwined events occur: firstly, the use of verlan in Rap and particularly in the hip-hop revolution of the late 1980s. This revolution had a profound effect on poorer suburbs and continues to be the dominant cultural force within these areas, but its bubble of influence also swelled to include the young middle-class. They listened to the same popular radio stations as people in the suburbs and began to pick up on this ground-breaking use of language and – in an attempt to appear ‘cool’ – began to emulate their hip-hop idols. 

This is inevitably followed by the popularisation of verlan, which itself has had a considerable cultural impact on the whole of France. Groups such as Suprême NTM, IAM and Assassin kick-started this process as they used verlan as a tool to make their songs both original and, more practically, to increase their options when it came to finding words which rhymed and sounded most appropriate. For example, the word femme (meaning woman) has a somewhat soutenu (formal) resonance, whereas meuf has a kind of suitable vulgarity. 

What's The Most Common Verlan Word?

Speak to any French person, and they would hazard a guess at meuf (from femme meaning woman) or ouf (from fou meaning crazy). However, I believe that I have found another, even better-known verlan word...

In terms of historical keystones in the use of verlan, we find that what is probably the best known verlan word (even today) originates to circa 1720. This word clearly greatly precedes verlan’s heyday, but is unquestionably the work of one of France’s most versatile writers, and certainly the most renowned French Enlightenment writer: François-Marie Arouet. The well-known Verlan word is, in fact, the writer’s very own nom de plume: Voltaire. Voltaire stems from the name of his family château in the Poitou region, named ‘Airvault’. If you then inverse the syllables of this, you have ‘vault-air’, which is phonically identical to the name Voltaire.

Although this was almost certainly not the only factor in his choice of nom de plume, it is nonetheless a fact of which Voltaire was quite aware.

When was Verlan first used?

The difficulty in discovering the precise origins of slang words (see my post on this) applies in attempts to determine the genesis of verlan. It is highly difficult to ascertain with any certainty the exact date when verlan was first used, or to decipher why this rather odd method of syllable inversion was selected over any other method. Verlan itself is part of a larger family: the anagram. According to Marcel Schwob, the use of the anagram to disguise or cloud some meaning (particularly in a comical or dramatically ironical situation), and therefore the first literary application of this sort of ‘jeux de mots’, originates back to the 15^th Century. Schwob cites an example from Le Petit Testament by François Villon, in which a character uses tabar as an anagram of rabat, which at the time meant an overcoat. In fact, an even earlier use of this form of word rearrangement can be seen in the 12^th century author Béroul’s manuscript of the legend of Tristan et Iseut, in which the name Tristan is transformed to Tantris so that Tristan could pass unnoticed by the Queen of Ireland. (This is written in a Normand dialect, so - to my mind - cannot strictly be regarded at the earliest recorded use of Verlan in the French language, but is widely regarded as such.) This case stood alone for the next 250 years (as far as any literature known today is concerned) in its use of word transformation as a method of deceit.

However, other cases of this kind of alteration have been found, with the reason behind these metamorphoses in early literature often linked to mimicking the speech of a child or foreigner, or to fit in with contemporary speech as a stylistic feature. However, this is far from the argot verlan of today, and in order to reach the first use recorded use of oral verlan, we must progress to the 19^th Century. It is at this stage that verlan appears to take its position as the true language of deception and disguise, used by prisoners to communicate both orally and via letters without arousing suspicion. Lazare Sainéan in Les Sources De L'Argot Ancien gives an example found in a letter sent from a convict of Toulon prison to a fellow prisoner in Paris. In this letter, the convict, who signs off as ‘La Hyène’, dates the letter ‘Lontou 1842’ (rather than ‘Toulon 1842’).

Why's it so hard to discover the origins (etymology) of slang words?

The difficulty in tracing the development of slang goes hand in hand with one of the great wonders of language: it is constantly evolving. This on-going evolution makes it virtually impossible to be certain of the precise origins of virtually all argot words or to discover the exact reasons for changes to that word over time. Take, for example, the word mec meaning guy in common French argot. The origins of this word have given rise to heated debate among French scholars and linguists who remain unsure of its precise origins leading to its first recorded (written) use in 1848. Some schools of thought believe the word to have stemmed from the old term meg (which is itself, in a sense, a slangy apocope of mégot meaning butt) which used to refer to smokers. Others believe the word is directly taken from the acronym MEC from mis en cause, which was written on the walls of the police stations in France in the 19^th century to indicate the room for people who were awaiting trial. The final faction (led by Henriette Walter) consider mec to be an abbreviation of maquereau (itself argot meaning pimp) as it was pronounced pre-1700 (mɛk.ʁo), with time evolving meaning to the current sense of mec as a bloke, while the word mac has retained the argot meaning of a pimp. If we then explore deeper into this one example, we can look for further progressions of the word mec in current French argot, and find that mecton is commonly used instead of petit mec, while mec itself has also been ‘verlaned’ to keum.

This example gives some insight into the immense complexity which arises when trying to deduce the etymology of slang words. This complexity is further compounded by slang’s primary use in spoken, as opposed to written, language. This means that any attempt to retrace the use and development of verlan prior to the invention of the microphone lacks certainty and relies on a certain amount of speculation. What is certain is that an outstanding force of nature seems to be continuously shaping the way we communicate and interact. Perhaps obviously – however strange it may seem – this evolution is caused by each individual’s environment shaping the way we use language. This is to say that we consciously adapt our use of language to change the way we are perceived by others and that our speech is also subconsciously influenced by the people and events which take place around us. In France, the power of this constant evolution of language between communities, races and nationalities and due to historical events is particularly applicable, with immigrants, wars, revolutions and technology all playing their part in what forms the French language, and in particular the slang, of today.

What's so special about French Slang?

With its immensely diverse society and its multiplicity of cultural roots, France has given birth to a language so richly embellished by this multi-ethnicity that its slang, once used almost entirely by gangs and small groups, has diffused into the spectrum of classes to include members of far broader socio-economic backgrounds. 

Slang in France stands out on two levels: firstly because it is used by a far greater number of young people of a low social and economic position than slang in the United Kingdom - for example (I shall use the United Kingdom and the use of slang in the English language as a comparison with France and the use of slang in the French language in order to juxtapose the two systems and highlight the comparably elevated role of slang in the latter) - and secondly because it is used by a far more extensive portion of society. 

In order to determine the cause of the exceptional pertinence of slang in French language today and the path French slang has taken, we must first define what is meant by slang, or argot as it is called in French. The use of argot is: ‘ the use of a type of language consisting of words and phrases that are regarded as very informal, are more common in speech than writing, and are typically restricted to a particular context or group of people.’ (This definition is according to the Oxford English Dictionary definition for slang. It is notable that within English language, slang is still seen as ‘typically restricted to a particular context or group of people’. In French, slang is by no means the language of the middle classes, but is used far more widely.) 

This site draws attention to the development of argotin general, with specific attention to the beginnings and progression of verlan (verlan is the process of inverting syllables to transform a word into a slang term, commonly used in French language today). The site also aims to derive and delve into the origins of commonly used slang in France today and shall highlight the considerable current impact of verlanin France, both linguistically and socially. In order to do so, one must try to interpret the extraordinary range of factors which have affected the slang currently in use, from the varying origins of immigrants to France (particularly of Arabs from Maghreb and Mashriq areas) to the demands for rapidity of expression in a currently technology driven environment.