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Comment by theboywho | Hacker News Reader

Verlan is usually used by french people with North African origins (where Arabic is the official language)

I have always thought that these people were just reading French from right to left like you would read Arabic, giving birth to Verlan.

There are no vowels in arabic, so "bi" "ba" "bo" are just instances of the letter "b", which I thought explained why verlan reversed the words but kept the order for each "consonant+vowel" unit

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Verlan has gone into common use by all strata of the general population, not just immigrants. It's been the case for 50+ years. It's much decried by the usual suspects like the Académie and whatnot but the truth is that everyone uses it.

The phenomenon is also accelerating, even the most trivial and shortest words are getting commonly reversed: là (there) -> al, pas (not) -> ap, moi/toi (me/you) -> ouam/ouat, ça (that) -> ass, bien (well) -> ienb, pied (foot) -> iep, etc. Lots of fun to be had when explaining all this stuff to other non-French speakers.

Another short one "ouf", as in "C'est ouf !" Used by everyone.

Some words are really used throughout, definitely not limited to any particular origin or age.

Every french person will understand expressions like "Ch'uis vénère" (I'm furious, from "énervé"), "Fumer de la beuh" (Smoking pot, from "herbe"). "Les keufs" (The cops, from "flics").

Consider the classic movie "Les Ripoux" (1984). "Ripou" Meaning corrupt cops, coming from "pourri" rotten.

Hardly, there are other commutative slangs that preceded verlan and African immigration, like louchébem (the slang of butchers).

And that's just in France, it's a common trope in many languages. It just happens to be much better documented in France.

I don't think so. In Argentina we have a similar thing called Vesre (re-ves).

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