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In the French language, verlan is the inversion of syllables in a word which is found in slang and youth language. French ( français,) is a Romance language spoken around the world by 118 million people as a native language and by about 180 to 260 million people A syllable ( Greek:) is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds Slang is the use of highly informal Words and expressions that are not considered standard in the speaker's Dialect or Language. It rests on a long French tradition of transposing syllables of individual words to create slang words. The name verlan is itself an example: verlan = lan ver = l'envers (meaning the inverse).

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General characteristics and some examples

Below is an English approximation of verlan, which could be called versin (inverse).

My piano is broken, phooey. /mai pijanou 'iz broukən fuwi:/

might be transformed into

My nopia is kenbro, eephoo. /mai noupija 'iz kenbrou, i:fu/

Verlan generally retains the pronunciation of the original syllables. In particular, French words that end in an e muet (a schwa, eu, such as femme) and words which end in a pronounced consonant and which usually have an e muet added at the end (such as flic) retain the sound of the e muet in verlan. In Linguistics, specifically Phonetics and Phonology, schwa can mean the following An unstressed and toneless neutral In addition, verlan often drops the final vowel sound after the word is inverted, so femme and flic become meuf and keuf, respectively. Some words have had their syllables inverted twice; for example, femme > meuf > feumeu or arabe > beur > reub/rebeu.

Different rules apply when dealing with one-syllable words, and, in certain dialects of verlan, certain words are usually inverted and certain words are not. Words like très remain unchanged in most dialects, while femme is usually inverted. Some verlan words (like meuf, from femme=woman) have become so commonplace that they have been included into the Petit Larousse, that a doubly "verlanised" version was rendered necessary, and the singly verlanised meuf became "feumeu". Le Petit Larousse is a French-language reference book (the Spanish-version "El Pequeño Larousse Ilustrado" and Italian-version "Il Piccolo Rizzoli

As with many language games, the study of verlan suffers from the fact that it is primarily a spoken language passed down orally, and thus there exists no standardized spelling. A language game (also called secret language or ludling) is a system of manipulating spoken words to render them incomprehensible to the untrained ear While some still argue that the letters should be held over from the original word, in the case of verlan most experts agree that words should be spelt as to best approximate pronunciation, hence the use of verlan as opposed to versl'en.

Theoretically any word can be translated into verlan but by reflex only a few expressions are used in everyday speech. Verbs translated into verlan cannot be conjugated easily. There is no such thing as a verlan grammar so most of the time verbs are used in the infinitive, past participle or progressive form.

For example :

Cultural significance and similar phenomena in other languages

Verlan is not so much a language as a means of underlining certain words. The fact that a lot of verlan words refer either to sex or drugs stems from its original purpose: to keep the communication secret from institutions of social control. An organism's sex is defined by the gametes it produces males produce male gametes (spermatozoa or Sperm) while females produce female gametes (ova or Egg cells; individual Recreational drug use is the use of Psychoactive drugs for Recreational purposes rather than for work, medical or spiritual purposes Nobody would solely use verlan while talking. Usually, the use of verlan is limited to one or two key words per sentence. Verlan words and expressions would rather be mixed inside a more general argotique language. Argot ( French, Spanish and Catalan for " Slang " is a Secret language used by various groups—including but not limited

Generally speaking, creating a verlan word on the fly from any random French word will result in smirks. However, understanding verlan words heard in specific situations will help one understand what many young people living in French banlieue (suburbs) actually say. Banlieue-erevanjpg|thumb|Banlieue of Erevan; Armenia]][[Image Etalement urbain banlieue paris - 03 Using such words can help one become ingratiated with these groups.

Some verlan words have gained mainstream currency. A notable example is the word beur (from arabe), now widely used to describe a French-born individual of North African descent. Beur is a Verlan ( French Slang) term for a descendant of Immigrants of North African origin living in France. North Africa or Northern Africa is the Northernmost Region of the African Continent, separated by the Sahara from Sub-Saharan (It has since been verlanised a second time into rebeu, which is now widely used. )

Verlan is popular as a form of expression in French hip-hop. [1] It fits nicely with the musical medium because "form ranks way over substance," although it must conform to experts' ideas of how hip-hop should sound. [2]

The use of verlan is less widespread in English-speaking countries, likely because morphology in French is less strict than in English, and so French syllables are more conducive to inversion from linguistic and aesthetic standpoints. Morphology is the field of Linguistics that studies the internal structure of words Linguistics is the scientific study of Language, encompassing a number of sub-fields Aesthetics or esthetics ( also spelled æsthetics) is commonly known as the study of sensory or sensori-emotional values sometimes called However, similar manners of speaking such as Pig Latin or "backslang", are used in English-speaking cultures (see Language game). Pig Latin is an English Language game in which the initial consonant sound of an English word is placed at the end and an ay is Affixed (Ex Back slang is an English coded language in which the written word is spoken phonetically backwards A language game (also called secret language or ludling) is a system of manipulating spoken words to render them incomprehensible to the untrained ear A form of slang very similar to verlan is used in Greek, called "podana", itself an inversed form of "anapoda" (i. Greek (el ελληνική γλώσσα or simply el ελληνικά — "Hellenic" is an Indo-European language, spoken today by 15-22 million people mainly e. backwards). Verlan is also very similar, if not identical, to the slang often used in Croatia, Bosnia, Serbia and Macedonia in the Serbo-croat languages and Macedonian. Croatia (Hrvatska ˈxȓvatska officially the Republic of Croatia ( Republika Hrvatska) is a southern Central European country at the crossroads between Serbia (Србија Srbija) officially the Republic of Serbia (Република Србија Republika Srbija) is a Landlocked Country This slang, "satrovacki" and sometimes labeled as the 8th case, is popular among the youth in especially Sarajevo and Belgrade. Šatrovački (Шатровачки is a feature of permuting syllables of words used in Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian and Macedonian.

More Examples

Persons

Adjectives

Verbs and verbal forms

Nouns

See also

External links

Notes

  1. ^ Rosen, Jody. A spoonerism is an error in speech or deliberate play on words in which corresponding Consonants Vowels or Morphemes are switched (see Vesre (reversing the order of syllables within a word is one of the features of the Rioplatense Spanish. Nadsat is a constructed Language used by the teenage subculture also called Nadsat in Anthony Burgess's novel A Clockwork Orange 10 November 2005. "David Brooks, Playa Hater. " Slate Magazine. http://www.slate.com/id/2130120. Accessed 21 March 2008.
  2. ^ St. Alse, Yaka. 21 January 2005. Notes to "Wardsback. " Open Brackets: Lost in Translation. http://openbrackets.com/article/640/wardsback. Accessed 21 March 2008.

Dictionary

verlan

-noun

  1. A type of backslang used in France, in which the order of the syllables of words is changed. For more information see w:Verlan
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