Verlan

Verlan (French pronunciation: ​[vɛʁlɑ̃]) is an argot in the French language, featuring inversion of syllables in a word, and is common in slang and youth language. It is argued that the best known speakers of the language are some of the worst students in French or Parisians schools. It rests on a long French tradition of transposing syllables of individual words to create slang words. The name verlan is an example: it is derived from inverting the sounds of the syllables in l'envers ([lɑ̃vɛʁ], "the inverse", frequently used in the sense of "back-to-front").

Words in verlan are formed by switching the order in which syllables from the original word are pronounced. For example, français [fʁɑ̃sɛ] becomes cèfran [sɛfʁɑ̃].

Verlan generally retains the pronunciation of the original syllables. In particular, French words that end in a ⟨e⟩ muet (such as ) and words that end in a pronounced consonant and which usually have an ⟨e⟩ muet added at the end (such as ) retain the sound of the ⟨e⟩ muet in verlan. In addition, verlan often drops the final vowel sound after the word is inverted, so femme and flic become meuf and keuf, respectively.

Different rules apply for one-syllable words, and words with multiple syllables may be verlanised in more than one way. For example, cigarette may yield garetsi or retsiga.

Some verlan words, such as meuf, have become so commonplace that they have been included in the Petit Larousse and a doubly "verlanised" version was deemed necessary, so the singly verlanised meuf became feumeu; similarly, the verlan word beur, derived from arabe, has become accepted into popular culture such that it has been re-verlanised to yield rebeu.

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