03/29/2021
Language is present in any discussions of migration, from anti-immigrant rhetoric to literal differences in language that complicate application processes. For today’s I want to turn to France, where an altered form of French has emerged from the country's immigrant population as both a language of social protest and also integration. “Verlans,” as the linked NYT article details, is the literal inversion of words (the reverse = l’envers → verlans), and has been emerging and spreading since the 1960s and 70s (with the first documented appearance dating back to the late 19th century). A literal manipulation of French, Verlans has grown largely in response to France’s historical and current marginalization of immigrant communities. Predominantly African and North African Arab immigrants have a long history of migration to France, initially as an essential labor force during France’s post-WWII industrialization that was confined to the impoverished outskirts or “slums” of cities. Generations later, their descendants are still largely ostracized by this physical separation as well as by the racism and Islamophobia articulated within secularism. Verlans, then, exists as a “language of alienation,” “‘a metaphor for opposition,’” and paradoxically a “means of integration,”; having more recently acquired an element “‘of political correctness expressing solidarity with and awareness of the immigrant community at a time of anti-immigrant politics.’''
Read more here:
Article on popular slang called Verlan in which standard French spellings or syllables are reversed or recombined, or both; photo (M)
