I first arrived in France to work as an au pair. I had taken French all through school, but for any other fellow Canadians, you know that this mostly means that you can ask for cheese, conjugate a fair amount of verbs and sing “c’est l’halloween” once a year. I was definitely guilty of being one of those anglophones who would take pride in saying “oh, mais oui je parle un petit peu français” and then stare blankly at the person as they rapid fire incomprehensible French at me in response.  

So the beginning was rough. Not only did I struggle with day to day communication, I found that I actively surrounded myself with as many anglophones as possible thus completely destroying any possibility for advancing my linguistic skills. I spent six months in Paris and only by the very end did I finally start spending more time with actual French people and forcing myself to try to speak the language.  

There’s this great feeling early on in language learning when you realize that your comprehension has improved. You’re still bumbling through broken sentences to reply, but you can almost feel the neurons starting to wire together. The second ah-ha moment of language learning comes when you start dropping words you’ve heard and understood through context alone. This is when you know you’re really starting to put two and two together and you’re taking risks! You’re feeling great! People are complimenting you on your progress and then one night you say to someone “c’est fou ça” and they tell you it’s impressive that you’re integrating verlan into your day to day vocabulary. What? What is verlan? C’est fou ça. 

 You speak French now? Good, now do it backwards.

Ladies and gentlemen, if you don’t already know about verlan it’s important that I share this with you now. In France there is a sort of piglatin-y slang (“argot”) that has actually grown roots and infiltrates certain daily conversations, this is verlan, or “l’inverse”…get it? 

You take a word and you switch the syllables around so, to use a common example, the word “femme” (woman/wife)  becomes “meuf”, and “fou” (crazy) becomes “ouf”. This is all good fun if you haven’t just spent six months learning new vocabulary under false pretences! This knowledge drop came as a huge shock. Some of the words I had been learning and using were actually other words but in reverse, and very informal. There is a time and a place to use verlan, but how are you supposed to know? It’s been over five years since I had this bomb dropped on me and guess what? There are still times when I actually figure out that a word I’ve taken to be “real” (for years) is actually another word in verlan. Last year at Christmas I was struck suddenly and out of no where by the realization that the word “relou” meaning “annoying” which I had come to know, love, and use frequently, is actually the word “lourd” in verlan. 

So, it’s true that in the beginning my introduction to verlan was not particularly welcome but I admit the slang has grown on me. It’s sort of fascinating too how certain words seep into common usage. Where I draw the line is double time verlan: there are certain words that have become so widely spoken they have been RE-verlaned! For example, femme became “meuf” which, admittedly, is a term I use quite regularly. What I’m not comfortable saying is “femeu”, the verlan version of the verlan version of femme. Did I lose you? 

Verlan est trop chébran !

Honestly, if you’re learning french in France or you plan to you really can’t avoid verlan. It’s important to brush up on a few of the more regularly used terms, if only to avoid using them in the wrong context! 

Here is a list of a few that I find I hear most regularly: 

Meuf = femme (woman)

Ouf = fou (crazy)

Relou = lourd (annoying, cumbersome) 

Teubé = bête (idiot)

Keuf = flic (cop, police officer)

Chelou = louche (shifty, sleazy, bizarre) 

Vénère = énervé (angry)

Teuf = fête (party) 

peclo = clope (cigarette) 

zibou = bisou (kiss) 

Voila! Now go forth and impress your French friends.