France à l’Envers
Pig Latin City
When I was growing up, once I knew how to spell, my parents had the ingenious idea to teach me Pig Latin. For those of you who don’t know what Pig Latin is, it’s a way of creating a sort of “secret language” by transforming English words into seemingly gibberish sounds unless you know the formula for creating the words. In the case of Pig Latin, the rule is to take the first letter of the word, move it to the end and then add “ay”. For example, the word “dog” would be said “og-day” (2 syllables). The phrase “I went to the park” would be said phonetically ”Iyay entway otay ethay arkpay” (the “A” sound at the end is a long A, pronounced the same as in “way” or “say”).
Growing up in rural New Hampshire, there was frequently not much to do, so my brother and I soon became experts at speaking Pig Latin. We would speak it so quickly that our parents could no longer understand what we were talking about and it became a fun sort of code language. To this day, I still enjoy rattling off phrases in Pig Latin, but unfortunately it’s only my brother who can actually understand me (and we live 4000 miles away from each other, so there’s not much use disguising our conversations over the phone)!
Verlan - The Language of "La Cité"
The French language also contains many coded ways of speaking. As someone who loves to learn slang, I was fascinated to discover that the origin of many funky slang words is actually the result of inverting the syllables of existing French words. This special language is known as “Verlan” which is how the word “L’envers” (which means “backwards” or “in reverse”) is pronounced when the two syllables are inverted! In fact, many of the inverted words in Verlan are already regular slang to begin with, so in many ways Verlan is actually “slang made from slang”. Verlan is also used frequently in more lower-class neighborhoods, especially by inner city immigrants, many of whom are still learning French and who may not even know what the word originally was.
There are so many wacky phrases in Verlan, that I’ll start with a few simple examples. The word “femme” (woman) is pronounced “meuf” in Verlan, as in “où est ta meuf?” (where’s your woman?). The words mère and père are transformed into “reum” and “reup” (remember this is a phonetic translation - Verlan isn’t really written). Keep in mind that saying a word in Verlan is frequently considered slightly derogatory, so you should never refer to your girlfriend as ”ma meuf” in front of her parents!
For your learning pleasure, I’ve compiled a table of some common expressions in Verlan. These words do occasionally slip into conversations, even with elite French speakers, so it’s good to have some background knowledge. As a foreigner, they are also a lot of fun to occasionally throw into your French phrases to show your language “culture” (if you want to call it that)…
| French Word or Phrase | Verlan | English Translation |
| laisse-tomber | laisse-béton (”béton” means “concrete” in French, so this is really quite a funny sounding phrase) |
Just let it go (as in “drop it” or “don’t get worked up”) |
| un flic | un keuf | slang for a cop |
| une bagnole | une gnolba | slang for a car |
| un mec | un keum | slang for a “guy” |
| lourd | relou | heavy, as in someone who’s difficult to deal with |
| la fête | la teuf | a party, as in ”hier soir, on a fait la teuf” (last night we partied) |
| à poil | à oilpé | slang for naked |
| un arabe | un beur | a person of Arab origin (in French inner cities, many immigrants are of Arab descent) |
| fou | ouf | crazy! - “tu es ouf!” (you’re crazy) |
| vas-y | zyva | what the heck! what are you talking about? (the Verlan word actually doesn’t mean the same as the original phrase) |
| bizarre | zarbi | strange |
| pourri | ripou | corrupted |
| un café | un féca | a coffee |
| cool | looc | cool (this is the English word “cool” directly transformed into Verlan) |
| faim | aimf | hungry - “j’ai aimf” (I’m hungry) |
| Carrefour (a chain of department stores in France) | Carrouf | France’s version of Walmart |
| un frère | un reuf | brother |
| une soeur | une reus | sister |
| un père | un reup | father |
| une mère | une reum | mother |
Because Verlan slang words can be generated from nearly any word in French, it’s fun to try to create them; in fact, one of my personal goals is to insert a new Verlan word into the French language. I’ve tried on many occasions to create original Verlan words and slip them into my conversations, but nothing more than confused silence greeted me as a response. My French friends all said I should just give it up - apparently the words I create just don’t ”sound” right. Nobody wants “c’est aivre” (c’est vrai), “pine-co” (copine) or ”aimp” (pain). In the end I’ll probably just end up talking to myself and translating French into Pig Latin… à ientôtbay!
Links
Online Pig Latin Translator- This site translates any phrase into Pig Latin. Loads of fun!
Les Années Verlan- An intellectual article about Verlan by Alain Rey. If you can make it through this article, then you’re probably too cultivated to speak Verlan!!
WikiPedia’s Take on Verlan - Details, origins, etc. - easy reading after Alain Rey’s article (and in English)
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July 25th, 2009 at 1:38 pm
Hi there …
The worst is when verlan is turned back into verlan, one would think you would go back to the same word : you don’t !!! I’ve heard the other day the word “meufeu”. It took me a while to understand (the context helped a lot) that it was verlan for meuf, which is, as you said, verlan for femme. I hate this language. I don’t understand it …
Keep on the good job. I like very much reading your blog.
PS : I’ll be in NH next week
Can’t wait !!
July 25th, 2009 at 3:14 pm
there’s also reubeu for Arab to beur and back again
July 25th, 2009 at 3:47 pm
And all these years I thought laisse-béton must mean something like, “Don’t bother. It’s cast in concrete.”
“En tout cas la première qui conclut avec un gnolgui raconte tout à l’autre.”
From the hilarious parisienne teenager, Agrippine–the BD (comic book) by Claire Brétécher.
Search gnolgui to turn up a dico or wiki for Agrippine/Brétécher. She probably made it *all* up.
July 25th, 2009 at 8:22 pm
Verlan can certainly require some mental gymnastics to understand what the heck people are trying to say! “meufeu” is a new one for me - pretty funny! Dare I say that “gnolgui” perhaps means guingol - is that true Verlan or just Agrippine langauge?
Several years ago I heard a variation of “laisse béton” further transformed into “laisse Bouygues”, which is the name of a large French construction firm (before they expanded into other areas like telecoms). I’m not sure if Bouygues was substituted because they worked frequently with concrete or also had a reputation for building houses that apparently would fall down (tomber), but I find the phrase hilarious!
Keep the Verlan comments coming and all the great new words!
July 27th, 2009 at 2:05 pm
Il est vegra bien cet article, j’ai bien golri
A seplu
July 27th, 2009 at 2:11 pm
yo, dans ma téci on parle comme des cailleras, c’est trop la secla !