[HN Gopher] How Africans are changing French, one joke, rap and ...
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       How Africans are changing French, one joke, rap and book at a time
        
       Author : mikhael
       Score  : 60 points
       Date   : 2023-12-17 19:58 UTC (3 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.nytimes.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.nytimes.com)
        
       | throwup238 wrote:
       | https://archive.ph/nItnV
       | 
       | I wonder what the Academie Francaise has to say about that...
        
         | edwcross wrote:
         | The Academie nowadays is (mostly) a bunch of old politically
         | influent people with zero or little linguistic knowledge. They
         | stopped reforming the language almost two hundred years ago and
         | now they can only hope that people will keep paying them
         | attention. But the language will keep evolving and drifting,
         | and they will keep resisting, until the divergence will be so
         | large that they will just disappear into nothingness, and
         | people will ask: "why did people bother with them for so
         | long?..."
         | 
         | Or, as the young ones do nowadays, they'll just say "Cheh!" to
         | the Academie.
        
           | BrandoElFollito wrote:
           | Well, yes, except that this is the language (and its rules)
           | that is taught as school.
        
             | mr90210 wrote:
             | Do your research on European Portuguese vs Brazilian
             | Portuguese, and you'll realize that the latter owns its own
             | version and defines its own standard without needing the
             | consent from any other country.
             | 
             | So, there is nothing France or any institution can do about
             | it.
        
               | BrandoElFollito wrote:
               | This is exactly what I wrote in my last sentence. Every
               | country speaking a language influences its version.
        
               | heywhatupboys wrote:
               | "read up on this wholly separate language and language
               | culture, and you will see that I mean about French"
        
           | mr90210 wrote:
           | Spot on. I am surprised that such a topic has been made an
           | article about given that language mutates 100% of the time as
           | soon as leaves its place of origin for whatever the mean,
           | from accent, to colloquialisms and to slangs.
           | 
           | It happened to Spanish, English and to other languages.
        
           | pyrale wrote:
           | > until the divergence will be so large that they will just
           | disappear into nothingness, and people will ask: "why did
           | people bother with them for so long?..."
           | 
           | They won't disappear as long as there is money.
        
           | pelorat wrote:
           | > They stopped reforming the language
           | 
           | That's the whole point of their existence...
        
             | saiya-jin wrote:
             | Well then what's their point of existence apart from taking
             | (rather large) bunch of tax money? To point out how much
             | they didn't do every year?
        
       | taimurkazmi wrote:
       | You're find this out now? After four centuries of Spanish in the
       | Americas, Spanish speakers there have developed an enormous
       | culture and diversity and innovation in the language. I remind my
       | Spanish friends that there are three times the number of Spanish
       | speakers in Mexico than in Spain. In fact, there are more Spanish
       | speakers in the United States there are more Spanish speakers
       | than in Spain. Ditto for Portuguese, where Brazil and the
       | Portuguese in Africa have developed delightful versions of
       | Portuguese -and an enormous and diverse culture. France and the
       | French should be proud that their language and culture are being
       | spread and transformed by the French speaking nations in Africa;
       | I especially love the music coming out of Mali, Senegal and
       | Algeria (Rai, anyone?).
        
         | csdvrx wrote:
         | I love rap, and I've found many gems in Russian and French rap.
         | 
         | These 2 scenes are extremely innovative!
         | 
         | > I especially love the music coming out of Mali, Senegal and
         | Algeria (Rai, anyone?).
         | 
         | Yes please! Can I ask you for more suggestions, even besides
         | Rai?
         | 
         | In the old school, I love Magic System (Gaou), and for current
         | hits, Aye Nakamura
         | 
         | EDIT: I can't understand why this comment is downvoted, except
         | maybe for political reasons:
         | 
         | > French should be proud that their language and culture are
         | being spread and transformed by the French speaking nations in
         | Africa
         | 
         | Apparently, they're angry about that!
        
           | thierrydamiba wrote:
           | Woah, did not expect to see a Magic System fan when I opened
           | up HN today. I was living in the Ivory Coast when Premier
           | Gauo came out. I love their music and it brought back some
           | good memories. Thank you!
        
             | csdvrx wrote:
             | If you have some current hits you can recommend, I'd love
             | to get recommendations from another Magic System fan!
             | 
             | In return I can suggest artists like Slava Marlow, or
             | places like zaycev.net to get a nice curated experience
             | without involving youtube: just click on the play button at
             | the bottom of the screen: currently I'm listening to
             | Subbota (Dym bombim)
        
             | seszett wrote:
             | > _Woah, did not expect to see a Magic System fan when I
             | opened up HN today._
             | 
             | Maybe "fan" is a bit too strong but I'd say any French
             | speaking person, at least in France and Belgium, growing up
             | in the 90/2000s, knows Premier Gaou and can sing a bit of
             | it. It was very popular.
        
           | dang wrote:
           | I think the downvotes are because of the snark/swipe in
           | "You're finding this out now?". That kind of thing is against
           | the site guidelines -
           | https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html - not just "
           | _Don 't be snarky_" and " _Edit out swipes_ ", but also "
           | _Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of
           | what someone says, not a weaker one that 's easier to
           | criticize._" The point of the OP is not surprise _that_ this
           | is happening (obviously language evolves in this way), but
           | curiosity about _how_ it is happening.
           | 
           | It's a pity because the rest of the comment is fine.
        
             | csdvrx wrote:
             | > It's a pity because the rest of the comment is fine.
             | 
             | It's indeed sad because it offered a nice general argument:
             | cultures interates on what they produce, in a feedback
             | loop. It produces wonderful new creations.
             | 
             | So it shouldn't be a surprise, both for language and for
             | music.
             | 
             | I care more about the music part, because I've found some
             | gems where I didn't expect them. It's taught me to keep my
             | eyes (and my ears lol) open for the wonderful new creations
             | that are all around us, but that we may miss.
        
           | sesm wrote:
           | Gems in Russian rap? As a native speaker I'm genuinely
           | surprised
        
             | csdvrx wrote:
             | > Gems in Russian rap?
             | 
             | YES: the music and the rythms are great but the visual
             | composition (scenery, etc) is even more wonderful: in
             | Cadillac the drone shots then the rotations with the slow
             | blends of racing games ending the nostril are very unique.
             | 
             | The visuals in rap are rarely that creative
             | 
             | > As a native speaker I'm genuinely surprised
             | 
             | Do you find surprising I also like the social critique from
             | IC3PEAK (Smerti Bol'she Net) or morgenshtern (Aristocrat)?
             | (but he's lost some of his magic since he moved)
             | 
             | If you do, give me better recommendations!
        
             | Mizza wrote:
             | I always liked this version of Hustlin..
             | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NzuM-uZtfYQ
        
           | prmoustache wrote:
           | > Apparently, they're angry about that!
           | 
           | I think this is a gross generalization.
        
         | welder wrote:
         | I love the carribean/cuban/dominican spanish where they leave
         | off the ending of words to they can speak faster.
         | 
         | https://www.tiktok.com/@msnewslady/video/7124117603425029422
        
           | prmoustache wrote:
           | It is similar to andalusian people.
        
       | BrandoElFollito wrote:
       | > Members of the French Academy, the 17th-century institution
       | that publishes an official dictionary of the French language,
       | have been working on the same edition for the past 40 years.
       | 
       | This is nonsense. The French Academy is adding new words to the
       | dictionary every year.
       | 
       | The whole article is weak to say the least. Of course, the French
       | spoken abroad is changed by the local influences. This is the sam
       | case as with any language that crosses countries boundaries.
       | There are major differences within France as well.
       | 
       | In everyday discussions, I do not see any special influence from
       | Africa on our language. The influence of instant messaging is
       | orders of magnitude larger and I have to decipher phrases such as
       | "vzy cr". Or monstrosities such as "sa va koi" which are shaping
       | our language deep down because it is how many young people
       | express themselves.
       | 
       | French is complicated and mostly masochist (we are the champions
       | of how to write something easy most difficultly, and crank
       | weirdness of pronunciation to 100). It is not helping that we are
       | rigid in how the language evolves (and sometimes straight
       | ridiculous). But the changes to French French come from inside
       | France, the ones from Mali French - from within Mali etc.
        
         | BiteCode_dev wrote:
         | Wait until they learn about chocolatines.
        
           | BrandoElFollito wrote:
           | Please do not use vulgar words here.
           | 
           | We are already way too lax on the usage of these words and
           | this only propagates blind violence (in French:
           | https://www.legorafi.fr/2013/03/20/toulouse-il-se-fait-
           | abatt...)
        
             | BiteCode_dev wrote:
             | To non french readers: le gorafi is the french equivalent
             | of the onion :)
        
               | BrandoElFollito wrote:
               | To be frank, their articles can be easily misinterpreted
               | as the reality.
        
         | blackshaw wrote:
         | > we are the champions of how to write something easy most
         | difficultly, and crank weirdness of pronunciation to 100
         | 
         | Wurs than Inglish? I hav my dowts.
        
       | grecy wrote:
       | Learning French while exploring West Africa was enormously good
       | fun.
       | 
       | For most people it's their 3rd or 4th or 5th language, and they
       | were always so full of joy and happiness than I was trying my
       | best. Nobody ever corrected my pronunciation or criticized me for
       | my bad grammar and lack of vocabulary. (Cough, France, Cough).
       | Thanks to all the encouragement and positivity I picked it up
       | pretty quickly, and thoroughly enjoyed conversations with random
       | locals all over the continent.
       | 
       | Actually, it was just as much fun as learning Spanish on the road
       | in Central and South America.
        
         | dudul wrote:
         | French people always get criticized for not understanding
         | foreigners' broken French. It is not out of malice. It is
         | because it actually is very hard to understand broken French.
         | 
         | A lot of very different words sound similar. A very simple
         | grammatical mistake can completely change the meaning of a
         | sentence.
         | 
         | And yeah, it's probably kind of the same in English, but French
         | is not the linga franca English is today (see what I did
         | there!). While we get a ton of daily practice reading/hearing
         | broken English, it is not the same with French for people
         | living in France.
         | 
         | People weren't correcting you to mock you. They wanted to
         | understand and probably help you.
        
           | heywhatupboys wrote:
           | French is the lingua franca of much of the world....
        
             | vlovich123 wrote:
             | What criteria are you using?
             | 
             | ~320M French speakers globally (220M native, official
             | language for 29 countries)
             | 
             | ~559M Spanish speakers (~480M native, 20 countries)
             | 
             | ~1.1B Mandarin speakers globally (a few countries, mother
             | tongue in ~20 countries)
             | 
             | ~1.5B English speakers globally (~400M native, official
             | language for 67 countries)
             | 
             | So for much of the world it seems pretty clearly English (&
             | has been since WWII) and French is in the "second" tier
             | competing with Spanish and Mandarin (probably just behind
             | Spanish & Mandarin in terms of penetration lingua franca is
             | about being the bridge language).
        
               | Koshkin wrote:
               | Yet, somehow I have no problem calling French 'franca'...
        
               | lm28469 wrote:
               | You do realize that "franca" here has nothing to do with
               | French or France ? Neither today nor originally
        
               | vasco wrote:
               | I did not know the origin at all so looked it up:
               | 
               | > Based mostly on Northern Italy's languages (mainly
               | Venetian and Genoese) and secondarily on Occitano-Romance
               | languages (Catalan and Occitan) in the western
               | Mediterranean area at first, Lingua Franca later came to
               | have more Spanish and Portuguese elements, especially on
               | the Barbary Coast (now referred to as the Maghreb).
               | Lingua Franca also borrowed from Berber, Turkish, French,
               | Greek and Arabic.
               | 
               | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mediterranean_Lingua_Franca
        
               | Koshkin wrote:
               | That's not exactly true. To quote Wikipedia, _Lingua
               | franca meant literally "Frankish language" in Late Latin,
               | and it originally referred specifically to the language
               | that was used around the Eastern Mediterranean Sea as the
               | main language of commerce._
        
               | cassepipe wrote:
               | Well, Lingua Franca == Frankish language and since France
               | got its name from the Franks I wouldn't say it's got
               | nothing to do
        
             | dukeyukey wrote:
             | In West Africa and the western part of North Africa, sure.
             | But outside of there, English is gonna be more useful. Even
             | in Europe. Hell, even in some multilingual Francophone
             | countries - https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/culture/english-
             | as-a-common-lan...
        
           | yieldcrv wrote:
           | sounds like people in west african countries have a superior
           | understanding of the purpose of language, which is to convey
           | shared concepts
        
             | dudul wrote:
             | No, it's just that they were themselves learning French, so
             | used to speaking broken French. You would get the same
             | experience by gathering a German, an Australian and a
             | Venezuelan all learning French as 2nd or 3rd language.
             | 
             | Additionally they most likely already knew English and were
             | able to decipher "French broken by an English speaker".
             | 
             | Edit: and since we're sharing anecdotes. I got the same
             | "rude" treatment from Russians when I was learning Russian
             | in Russia, or from Swedish folks when learning Swedish in
             | Stockholm. It's just hard for native speakers to deal with
             | broken linguo, that's just how it is. Swedish people would
             | even reply to me in English, some would call it rude, they
             | were just trying to be helpful and efficient.
        
               | grecy wrote:
               | > _Additionally they most likely already knew English and
               | were able to decipher "French broken by an English
               | speaker"._
               | 
               | No, they did not speak English.
               | 
               | If they had, I wouldn't have subjected them to my French.
        
               | freeney wrote:
               | I don't think this issue is about the French spoken in
               | West Africa being 'broken.' Or that 'they were themselves
               | learning French'... Rather, it reflects the tolerance and
               | adaptability inherent in multilingual societies like
               | those in West Africa. People are simply more accustomed
               | to communicating across different languages and more
               | accepting of non-native speakers and various accents,
               | even if they are native speakers themselves. Ironically
               | this tolerance as opposed to the supposed academic
               | perfection of the language spoken in France makes use of
               | the language as it was initially intended when it was
               | created a lingua franca meant to be used by a wide
               | variety of people. In France however there is often less
               | tolerance for varying pronunciations and accents, not
               | everyone is the same in that regard but it's definitely
               | something people experience in France (we would wish that
               | maybe they would resort to English sometime to continue
               | the conversation or correcting us but this is much less
               | likely too).
               | 
               | This isn't just about non-native speakers but also
               | applies to native French speakers from regions like
               | Quebec or Congo. Despite using similar vocabulary, they
               | sometimes face challenges being understood in France,
               | mainly due to their distinct accents, I mean I believe
               | this also occurs between various region of France
        
           | grecy wrote:
           | > _People weren 't correcting you to mock you. They wanted to
           | understand and probably help you_
           | 
           | No. In France they openly showed their disgust at my French
           | and refused even to speak to me.
        
             | dudul wrote:
             | For the reaction to be so strong I wonder if there was more
             | than just broken French. Always easy to go with the super
             | nice tourist/mean for no reason autoctone.
             | 
             | Anyway, sorry you had this experience.
        
           | forty wrote:
           | Yes, I'm French and I often have a hard time understanding
           | French even correct, with a strong accent I'm not used to. I
           | remember, when I was ~15 I met a guy from RDC (Congo) and it
           | was very awkward for me as he was speaking French with a
           | Belgian and African accent which even with all the best
           | intent I could not understand, while he understood me just
           | fine. We ended up speaking in English (it was in London so I
           | pretended wanting to improve my English :))
        
           | Koshkin wrote:
           | Interestingly, I could not help but notice that, being
           | neighbors and all, both the English and the French are by far
           | the worst offenders in terms of how broken one's
           | pronunciation of the language of the other usually is.
        
             | seszett wrote:
             | We understand each other's broken accent really well
             | though. So it doesn't really matter.
        
             | BurningFrog wrote:
             | Probably doesn't help that 1/3 of English is imported and
             | mangled French words.
        
               | yawboakye wrote:
               | while 1/2 of french is imported and mangled latin. so
               | where did english borrow from really? given that it's
               | easier to figure out the latin roots of the anglicized?
        
               | ekianjo wrote:
               | The normand invasion of England and political control for
               | 400 years changed the English language for sure.
               | 
               | The medieval English and the modern English are
               | completely different. Medieval French and modern French,
               | not so much.
        
           | triceratops wrote:
           | > It is because it actually is very hard to understand broken
           | French. A lot of very different words sound similar.
           | 
           | They frivolously expend with the consonants at the ends of
           | words. All that additional signal just thrown away! /s
        
           | dataflow wrote:
           | > French people always get criticized for not understanding
           | foreigners' broken French
           | 
           | The main criticism I've heard is kind of the opposite - that
           | they dislike foreigners _not_ trying to speak French, and
           | just starting communication in English. If both of these are
           | true then I guess that puts foreigners in a tough place where
           | they 're damned if they try and damned if they don't?
        
             | Swizec wrote:
             | I've had extraordinary luck with broken French in France.
             | If you start in French and do your best, a lot of people
             | suddenly speak fluent English. Especially in metro areas.
             | 
             | But the experience does not compare to traveling with my
             | partner who speaks fluent zero-accent French. Paris turns
             | into a different much nicer city when you pair with a
             | native speaker.
             | 
             | That said, you'll never get the level of service you see in
             | USA. The French (Europe in general) just don't care that
             | much about customer UX. You either do it their way or you
             | can leave.
        
               | jimmaswell wrote:
               | Europe as a whole has always come off as unpleasant to
               | visit as an American, from what I've read online such as
               | this thread. In no American city I've been to do you have
               | to be so vigilant for pickpockets as you apparently do in
               | European cities, and virtually no one in America will
               | complain about your accent or grammar. We have free water
               | at restaurants, and the staff won't treat you like a
               | mooch for asking about it; in fact most staff of any
               | business will make at least a basic attempt to be
               | pleasant towards you. You get your money's worth in food
               | portions at restaurants, the taxes are cheaper, you won't
               | be arrested and fined for making a rude tweet.. why
               | exactly would I want to visit Europe?
        
           | passwordoops wrote:
           | > People weren't correcting you to mock you. They wanted to
           | understand and probably help you
           | 
           | I'm (an anglophone) from Quebec and worked in Europe for a
           | while. Parisians _totally_ mock people not speaking Parisian
           | French. They 're even open and extraordinarily condescending
           | about it. The rest of the country is cool and generally
           | helpful
        
             | OnlyMortal wrote:
             | I met French speaking Quebecois in Paris. They were
             | complaining the Parisians didn't understand them.
             | 
             | They weren't enamoured to France.
        
           | saiya-jin wrote:
           | I interact with french in France for some 13 years, spending
           | most weekends there (Chamonix! but all over the place from
           | east to west to south, not much north yet).
           | 
           | First of all, french is not some beautiful language once you
           | grok the grammar, rather pretty weird and old layered
           | 'spaghetti code' with tons of exceptions to tons of obscure
           | rules (nothing, absolutely nothing elegant there). Its
           | needlessly complex especially when you know other languages
           | solved it much better, and as with other bureaucratic stuff
           | in France any attempt for reform failed. English to non-
           | native (in both of those) is a beautiful magnificent blessing
           | in comparison, you can be proficient with little, french will
           | literally look puzzled at you and get _really quickly_ fed up
           | with you. Patience is really not a typical french virtue. But
           | I guess if you like the feeling of struggling for whole life,
           | looked down upon and gain motivation from it then its great.
           | 
           | Second, I don't know details of how schools work in France
           | (seems a rather toxic place pushing way too hard for
           | competitiveness but I may be wrong here), but I see result
           | every day also in cca 50% of my colleagues - people are
           | absolutely snobbish in the worst possible manner about their
           | language to the point of being sometimes toxic, and
           | automatically scowl at any tiny mistake. Guess what, as a
           | foreigner trying to learn language you will make tons of
           | them, even on C2 level. There is absolutely minimum help,
           | they will just laugh at you like bunch of small kids,
           | literally mocking you and pointing fingers at you. I mean 50+
           | years old higher managers bursting into laugh how stupid you
           | are. Every single time. Schooling and overall mindset make
           | french people behave like arrogant folks a lot (not so much
           | say folks from African colonies, much much nicer folks to
           | interact with; same for Swiss french and cca Belgians too.
           | Don't know much about Quebec folks, but in casual
           | conversation french mock and insult them behind their back
           | pretty horribly). I've never ever been mocked by natives for
           | making even basic mistakes in any other language, its just
           | part of basic human decency.
           | 
           | I've seen recently shock and disgust among young French that
           | some french local paragliding teacher exposed to decades of
           | english-speaking tourists used some english words in his
           | french. Those were some otherwise smart folks. I've had my
           | very good American friend who is overweight literally gave up
           | on french and France, on his month long trip there they were
           | insulting and mocking him in the bars and restaurants, in
           | hotels, in trains etc (I talk about staff, not other
           | tourists). Man, I have hundreds of stories like this,
           | unfortunately very consistent.
           | 
           | I know 5 languages, 3 of them very different compared to my
           | native one, and French is by far the worst of them to learn
           | and just use it (I know there are worse, just describing my
           | experiences). French folks need to come in terms of not being
           | superpower nor center of the world anymore and accepting
           | there is more than their language in the world. I've visited
           | every continent (apart from Antarctica) and generally
           | travelled a lot and literally nowhere I felt so little
           | welcomed and rather just tolerated due to money bringing in
           | like in France. A truly beautiful place, history, cuisine,
           | nature, but neither me, nor my wife (who studied in Lyon for
           | quite some time) nor folks around us in similar situation
           | certainly don't travel there for the local people, which is
           | often the most important aspect of my traveling when going
           | for exotics.
           | 
           | /sorry for long rant
        
             | csdvrx wrote:
             | > nor my wife (who studied in Lyon for quite some time)
             | 
             | Can you please ask her some recommendations for
             | contemporary music?
             | 
             | I find french rap wonderful!
             | 
             | My new favorite artist is Aye Nakamura ; before I really
             | loved Eva Queen.
        
             | gumby wrote:
             | > First of all, french is not some beautiful language once
             | you grok the grammar, rather pretty weird and old layered
             | 'spaghetti code' with tons of exceptions to tons of obscure
             | rules (nothing, absolutely nothing elegant there). Its
             | needlessly complex especially when you know other languages
             | solved it much better,
             | 
             | Though I can't disagree with the "ancient spaghetti code"
             | characterisation, "needlessly complex" is linguistically
             | meaningless. People continuously use language and
             | infelicities are typically rapidly eliminated.
             | 
             | My wife and I would between us resort to French express
             | things that couldn't be conveniently expressed in our
             | respective native languages. I think it's pretty common --
             | probably universal -- to inject foreign loan words or
             | phrases in multilingual families or other groups. In the
             | case of resorting to French, it's usually for a word that
             | has a lot of implications, ambiguity or other
             | ramifications, which can be expressed compactly in French.
             | A consequence of the spaghetti code you decry.
             | 
             | Written Arabic is really great for this.
        
           | pmontra wrote:
           | A French friend of mine told me: get the pronunciation right,
           | then it doesn't matter if the words are wrong.
        
       | pyrale wrote:
       | > But some in France are slow to embrace change. Members of the
       | French Academy, the 17th-century institution that publishes an
       | official dictionary of the French language, have been working on
       | the same edition for the past 40 years.
       | 
       | Lmao, no, they don't. They actually pay other people to do that
       | work.
       | 
       | People abroad don't seem to realize that the academys, most
       | notably the french academy are mostly a retirement scheme for
       | elder conservative members of the establishment. When you're no
       | longer relevant, you go there to earn a fat paycheck doing
       | nothing, and occasionally rant about how it was better before.
        
         | switch007 wrote:
         | I didn't know that lol. That's hilarious
        
       | h1fra wrote:
       | It's always fun to see foreigners coming to paris discovering
       | that the french they learned at school is basically useless.
       | 
       | Not only we use africans or arabic words, but we also speak in
       | reverse, with noises, everything is shortened, etc.
        
         | nequo wrote:
         | In reverse? Do you mind sharing a couple examples? I'm not a
         | French speaker and this sounds intriguing to me.
        
           | playingalong wrote:
           | They likely meant non-standard word order in a sentence. Not
           | reading the words backwards.
        
             | seszett wrote:
             | No, it's speaking the word backwards, syllable-wise.
             | 
             | L'envers becomes verlan, femme becomes meuf, fete teuf,
             | louche is chelou and merci is cimer, for the most common,
             | everyday words.
             | 
             | It can even go further, with Arabe becoming Beur which
             | itself gets verlanised into Rebeu. Or meuf, femeu.
        
           | scrollaway wrote:
           | Look up verlan. It's a type of French slang where you reverse
           | syllables or sounds of words.
           | 
           | "Verlan" itself comes from the reverse of "l'envers" which
           | means "reverse".
        
             | homarp wrote:
             | And "l'envers" is pronounced lanver
        
             | SV_BubbleTime wrote:
             | Who has time for that?
        
               | gumby wrote:
               | It's street slang, for the same reason Cockney rhyming
               | slang exists: solidarity and so that their so-called
               | "betters" don't understand them.
        
           | wk_end wrote:
           | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verlan
        
           | syncopatience wrote:
           | I think the reference is to Verlan, where the syllables in a
           | word are inverted. It reminds me of "Pig Latin":
           | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verlan
        
           | tux3 wrote:
           | French has "verlan", which is when you swap some of the
           | syllables of a word to give it a slang or "street" vibe.
           | 
           | The world "verlan" itself is verlan for "envers" ("in
           | reverse")
        
         | cassepipe wrote:
         | I'd say that's one of the worst thing in French : The gap
         | between written and spoken is so much bigger than say spanish
         | which I think makes it hard for foreigners.
        
       | neonate wrote:
       | https://archive.ph/nItnV
        
       | sesuximo wrote:
       | This seems completely unsurprising? Subcultures have their own
       | slang, and some of it is spreading? That's true in
       | French/English/anything
        
         | dang wrote:
         | The point of the article is not surprise _that_ this is
         | happening (obviously language changes in this way), but
         | curiosity about how it is happening.
         | 
         | " _Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of
         | what someone says, not a weaker one that 's easier to
         | criticize._"
         | 
         | " _Please don 't post shallow dismissals, especially of other
         | people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something._"
         | 
         | https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
        
         | frosting1337 wrote:
         | I don't think anyone is surprised half a continent speaking
         | French has its own twist on the language. But it _is_
         | interesting to read about, especially the impact that hip-hop
         | and rap in these countries have had on the dialects, such as
         | calling your boyfriend bread.
        
         | avarun wrote:
         | [delayed]
        
       | franz68 wrote:
       | They are mainly changing France
        
         | prospector1065 wrote:
         | Do you have something else you want to say? Because it sounds
         | like you're just trying to allude to racism
        
       | spoonjim wrote:
       | You'll get culturally enriched and you'll enjoy it
        
       ___________________________________________________________________
       (page generated 2023-12-17 23:00 UTC)