Verlan: Talking Backwards in French

Abstract

AS A FULBRIGHT TEACHING ASSISTANT in Paris, I was alarmed to discover that I often did not understand the language that my students were speaking around me. Since Lyc&e Henri IV is a prestigious institution in France, I had arrived with the expectation of having access to the French of France's best students. Consequently, not understanding them was certainly disappointing. Quite disenchanted, I braced myself for a more difficult language experience than I had anticipated, and devoted myself to understanding that foreign-sounding language that I had mistaken for a French beyond my comprehension. Committed to the theoretical foundations of second language acquisition research, I decided that these unfamiliar conversations were providing me with input which would hopefully convert to something comprehensible in the not so distant future. I soon became aware that the unfamiliar sounds I was hearing were not French, but rather Verlan. What is Verlan? It is what Sherzer refers to as speech play in the form of a language game that involves syllable inversion, and varies in complexity according to the number of syllables in the word (Sherzer 19). The term Verlan is hence a metathesis of l'envers re

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