Verlan, a French street-slang that combines spoonerisms and backwards-talk, is moving from the North African immigrant population into general parlance.
Thus the standard greeting "Bonjour, ça va?" or "Good day, how are you?" becomes "Jourbon, ça av?" "Une fête" (a party) has become "une teuf"; the word for woman or wife, femme, has become meuf; a café has become féca; and so on. The word Verlan itself is a Verlanization of the term l'envers, meaning "the reverse."…
"Speaking backwards becomes a metaphor of opposition, of talking back," writes Natalie Lefkowitz, a professor of French applied linguistics at Central Washington University in Ellensburg, Wash., and the author of "Talking Backwards, Looking Forwards: The French Language Game Verlan" (Gunter Narr, 1991), which, when it was published, was one of the first major studies of Verlan.
But along with its subversive element, Ms. Lefkowitz explained in an interview, "for the young urban professional, Verlan is a form of political correctness expressing solidarity with and awareness of the immigrant community at a time of anti-immigrant politics."
(Thanks, Jed!)
