Verlan

I've been meaning to do a post about Verlan for a long time -- it's a French language game that is quite productive in the French equivalent of hip hop culture, and a few words have made it into common usage. I asked JD and Fc about it more than a month ago, which turned out to be the best thing I could have done because the two of them came up with a lot of words for me and we cracked ourselves up all evening.

Anyway, for your delectation, Verlan. The idea is either to reverse the syllables of a word, or if there's only one syllable, reverse the consonants and put in a neutral-sounding vowel (kind of like the vowel sound in book). I haven't really sat down to see if the rules are really rules or more like guidelines, but some enterprising phonologist might want to sit down and do that!

Actually the word "Verlan" itself is the reversed form of l'envers, 'reverse,' which I discovered suddenly only at the end of the evening. (It felt like when I was teaching Frege to my philosophy of language class, writing "Eminem is Marshall Mathers" on the board, and finally getting tired of writing his full name so just writing his initials, which made me go "Oh...." and made the whole class laugh at me!)

First, some words in relatively mainstream usage (spelling is just a guess!):

Verlan	Français	meaning
keuf	flic	'cop'
meuf	femme	'woman'
relou	lourd	'heavy,' as in hard to deal with
ouf	fou	'crazy'
ripou	pourri	'bad guy'
chelou	louche	'bizarre'
adonf	à fond	'very fast' (flooring it)
fonsdé	défoncé	'high' (on drugs)
scud	disque	'CD'

But there are lots of others:

Verlan	Français	meaning
cum	mec	'guy'
oinj	joint	'joint'
ken	niqué	'f***ed up'
teuch(i)	sh*t	'marijuana'
reum	mère	'mother'
reup	père	'father'
reuf	frère	'brother'
reus	soeur	'sister'
iench	chien	'dog'
ça comme	comme ça	"like that"
z'y va	vas-y	"come on"
reuch	cher	'expensive'
les çaisfran	les français	"the French people"
luc	cul	'ass'
eins	sein	'breast'
teuté	tête	'head'
beubar	barbe	'beard'
teub	bite	'penis'
zen	nez	'nose'
la keufna	la fnac	(a book and media store)
garetci	cigarette	'cigarette'
feuj	juif	'Jew(ish)'
wam	moi	'me'
wat	toi	'you'
beubon	bombe	'pretty girl'
teupu	pute	'whore'
taspé	pétasse	'bimbo'
veugra	grave	'crazy'
ça fait iech	ça fait chier	"that pisses me off" (lit. 'makes (one) crap')
cimer	merci	'thank you'

But my favorite Verlan is the mainstream word rebeu, which is Verlan for beur 'Arab', which was itself originally Verlan for arabe. C'est veugra!